[Kevin Kolodziej]

The moment I saw this game at Kickoff, I loved it. The strategy is the best we've seen in a long time for an FRC game. There are many many many types of robots out there. The design of the game allows a decent robot to have an opportunity to play every part of the game, from inbounder, to trusser, to cycle ender, to defense - sometimes all in the same match. For the first time in a long time, I feel like this game is actually a competition and not an exhibition of who's robot is faster at a given task.

That, I think, is where the problem lies. The FRC community has gotten complacent. The last time we had an open field was 2009, and no one could get enough speed to really cause any damage in that game. Before that, you have to go back to 2002 to really have a dynamic "if you do this, I'll do this" sort of game. Maybe 2004. We have nearly 10x as many teams playing the game in 2014 vs 2002 - so naturally, there will be more complaints.

Are there flaws with the way the game is administered? Sure. The GDC is working on them. The decision to change a rule on Thursday, while not unprecedented, was a terrible idea (note: it didn't really work last time either, if memory serves correctly). The rule change itself is not a bad thing, but it is a knee-jerk reaction to the communities complaints and I don't personally like it.

My biggest complaint this year is consistency. Event to event will never be consistent, but that's fine. The inconsistency between days of a single event is unacceptable. Replays on one day for pedestal delays but not the next? That's not okay. Not a single high speed ramming call during qualifications but 10 in the elims? That's not okay (yes, play is more intense, but of the calls I saw, they were not damaging nor malicious).

How do we fix it? I say get rid of the pedestal light altogether and just take the ball when the ball is scored - end up with 2 balls on the field? Make that a technical foul. No judgement required there.

Referee consistency is partly due to the overworked refs - just put more refs on the field. I was told this weekend that HQ would not allow more than 4 refs + head ref for qualifying. I don't understand this at all. When I reffed in 2008, each quadrant had a ref, there was a head ref, and there were at least 2 other refs (maybe 4?) watching the scoring (tracking balls, tracking robots). THIS WORKED. Why can't we do that this year?