Quote:
Originally Posted by PayneTrain
I envisioned the death of World Championships as we know it to come by the end of this decade (and Im not sure there is anyone who is remotely aware and active in FRC/FIRST who thinks otherwise.
I saw an ideal endgame would be to take the idea of World Championships and turn it into something like a super-IRI. A weekend in July has a 150 team event with two fields. Take the 16 super regional winners, the 4 HoF Finalists, the top 25-30 points earners over the season from each zone, and the final 10-30 spots that would be determined as some kind of wild card: a mixture of HoF teams that didn't make the points cut, the top rookies in the world, top points earners at every super regional that didn't make the cut (like a most-improved).
It's largely an exhibition, just like World Championships of any high school sport. It should be run by FRC, but you can call the award something like The Director's Cup. You can adjust the game rules to improve play at a high level, you disregard bag time, and you don't pay a registration fee to go.
You get 2 months to prepare for a truly magnificent spectator driven version of FRC. It's the All-Star game, the midsummer classic of robotics, and it's globally televised by Fox Sports 1 or NBC Sports or ESPN. They sponsor the telecast to remove the registration fees. They get two months to go out and interview and shoot b-roll of top competitors for segments. You get two fields so play doesn't have long lulls. You put the competition on a Friday and Saturday in the summer to avoid people losing vacation days or school time. You get to keep FIRST's idea of providing a championship type experience at what I think would better be known as "Zone Championships" and the idea of World Championships carries on in the FRC Grand Prix. People from all over the FRC world can come to watch and learn from the best teams. At the end, you crown the Chairman's Award Winner and the 3 Winner's of the President's Cup.
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This sounds like a fantastic way to accomplish the goals of both sides. Making it a small event (sub 100 teams total) makes it extraordinarily prestigious. I know a lot of teams (my team included) seem to begin to expect they will make it to champs every year. Having it be a huge deal for anyone to make it to champs would be a lot of fun. Sure you have your 1114's and 254's that always qualify, but you cut down on a lot of teams that land in that middle tier, and it becomes a massive goal to make it to championships.
On top of that, it also suits the popularization of it better with a short event that a major network can broadcast, instead of 2 separate 4 day events.
I would be thrilled to see FIRST take this route instead of the chosen path.