[ksafin]

OP here. I want to share some of my thoughts regarding what has been said, and share what I intended the focus of this thread to be.

Firstly,
For those of you who have been discussing the rules - saying that the refs followed the rules correctly, that a rematch shouldn't have been given due to the rules, etc.
I am in no way advocating for rule violation by either the referees, volunteers, or any teams. In our moment of disbelief and desperation, we all asked for a rematch (I of course don't know the requirements for a rematch, I've never needed to know). Frankly, as someone mentioned, this didn't require a rematch. It should have been noted as a mistake, revised, and that's it. A request for a rematch was a last-minute plea to correct a grave injustice.

Citing these rules as reason that this injustice was committed and not corrected is not enough for me. For those of you doing this, are you really trying to tell me that I should accept the situation, which was clearly wrong, because a rule said I should? If there's rules that allow this kind of behavior, and these kinds of things to happen, they should be changed.

What am I upset about?
A lot. I'd like to thank whoever clarified that I am not trying to be a broken record in terms of the "refs are humans" discussion. I totally understand that. My problem stems from an indifference to the injustice and a lack of interest in correcting it for the purpose of saving time and saving face.

I've read all of your posts. I agree with some and disagree with others. I know that, deep down in my heart, I cannot accept it when anyone says "That's the nature of sports, people mess up, you have to deal with it."

Really? This is FIRST Robotics. Are you telling me we need to settle for failures, injustices, and problems? We should be eagerly trying to solve them, enhancing the experiences of teams, and doing everything possible to ensure a fair, efficient, and proper tournament.

Students spend thousands of man-hours developing these robots, and I would not tolerate, whether it was my team or any other, them being shut down improperly because a wrong call was made and thousands of people in the FIRST community said they should "deal with it" and that that's "how it is".


Will this be a big deal a few years down the road for me? Probably not. But that isn't the point. There's been too many problems for me to ignore them. We have an opportunity to influence positive change, and we should take it.

Video Replays
They aren't allowed. Both in FRC and FTC. Why? I want to hear a good argument for this. I've heard people say stuff about GP and how FIRST doesn't need video replays. At the same time, I've met tens if not hundreds of people who have considered "GP" to be a weapon used by referees and others to silence students. That is, if you don't accept their call, you aren't being GP. That saddens me.

It's been said before, countless times, and I'm going to say it again. Almost every major sport accepts video replays. Even Major League Baseball is instituting it for next year.

Why doesn't FIRST? Is it because FIRST is more "just", more "GP", more "high and mighty" that it isn't prone to human error and neglect? No. I can't accept that.

We should constantly be moving to, within means, make FIRST a better experience for teams. I can understand the difficulty of video replays for qualification matches - there's over 100 of those. That's fine. In general, a bad match in quals doesn't take you out of the game - it averages out and you end up being OK.

For Finals, where the stakes are so high, and the matches so few, this should be important and easy to institute. We spent considerably more time stalling, bickering with refs, and trying to force a rematch than a review of video would have taken.

What does this mean going forward?
I'm a FIRST alumni. I left FIRST with every ounce of love and appreciation for the program and everything it's done for me. I'm taking this as an opportunity to do something to help it.

I spoke to an FTC team, who, due to both the scandal I've outlined with my team, and other issues, is absolving their FTC team. They're upset with the way that FTC has been deteriorating, the problems that have arisen, the injustices, and the faults. This isn't an isolated case. I know of at least four FTC teams that are quitting FTC simply because of this story.

This is a big deal. I'm going to work with them to try to bring more of this story to light. We're going to be developing a petition of grievances and ideas. We hope FIRST takes them seriously. More and more people are growing discontent every year within FTC. We want to see change. We want to see it taken seriously.