[Travis Hoffman]

Whatever rule/penalty system FIRST chooses to employ, in my opinion, it must strike a fair balance between offense and defense. BOTH types of robots and strategies should be evenly encouraged, and FIRST should not favor one style of play over the other. In the case of the yellow/red card system, any yellow card you levy upon a team better be for something above and beyond the normal, competitive pushing and shoving that defensive teams like to use. I do not want to see any "let's protect the prima donna star quarterback from getting a hangnail" rules that have curtailed the aggressiveness of NFL pass rushers. I do not want the referees putting the fear of God into teams that like to employ perfectly legitimate defensive strategies. However, whenever a pass rusher delivers a blow to a QB's head or throws a late hit, I expect to see the proper penalties levied against them.

Ultimately, I still believe that regardless of what system you have in place, the human element is always going to dictate the fairness of refereeing at a FIRST event. At the IRI, we were permitted to go about our usual defensive business without any yellow cards whatsoever. I think Andy and his crew drew the proper line between normal aggressive driving and more dangerous and potentially damaging maneuvers. To be fair, this was also the case 99% of the time at most FIRST events we attended. The yellow/red card system worked at IRI because the referees were fair-minded people who communicated with each other and the involved teams to discuss each issue and reach a consensus conclusion, and they then PERSONALLY COMMUNICATED their decision to the teams and the audience. That is the one big difference I can see between FIRST ref crews and Andy's crew - Andy goes above and beyond the call of duty to explain the ruling to everyone at the event. Many times, at FIRST events, there is insufficient explanation of referee rulings, and I think this generates unnecessary uncertainty, anger, and bitterness. I believe the IRI refereeing style should be the standard practice for ALL FIRST referees. This is the type of referee performance I expect to see in place at every official FIRST event.