[Swan217]

Originally Posted by Andrew Schreiber

Except nothing went wrong in the Orlando situation on HQ's side. The robot's competed illegally and were, rightfully, red carded. That's the rules from HQ's perspective. Now, as to whether they were told it was ok or not... that's an entirely different issue but is NOT at HQ's level. It's at the level of the LRI.

I see a lot of similarities between this call & Orlando:

I learned later that there was some question about whether 1323 had intended to request a backup team, or had accidentally submitted the wrong form, believing they had instead requested a timeout. I contacted the team, along with the FTA and Head Referee, to get their understanding of the full sequence of events. After reviewing the information, I now believe the team had intended all along to call a timeout, but in the rush to get the form submitted, did not notice they were using the wrong one. There were a few brief conversations between the team members and the Head Referee during this situation, but with the Head Referee believing with good reason the team had requested a backup, and the team believing with good reason they had requested a timeout, they had different contexts for those discussions, so the full nature of the issue took time to reveal itself.

The team did submit their backup coupon, but had I believed at the time this was an accident, I would have allowed them to compete.

...

I apologize to the teams involved in this situation, and the community, for the stress this caused. I want to emphasize that I believe all key volunteers at the event were doing their very best with a confusing situation, and had the best interests of FRC at heart. We have some great volunteers at SVR. I made the final call, so the ultimate responsibility for the result lies with me.

So the question is: Did FIRST contact Pink / Bacon like they contacted this team, and likewise determined that in Orlando these teams did NOT make a mistake & were not acting in good faith? Or did they not bother then, but now they did? Seems to me that HQ is making a few decisions this season without getting enough information, which indicates a procedural failure.