[Travis Hoffman]

Originally Posted by Aidan F. Browne

*Sigh* ...as my Mom used to say, "You just can't please some people."

Or many people, in this case. I'm just the one who started the thread. If I was alone in my opinion, no one else would have bothered to contribute to the discussion.

FIRST goes to great effort to do exactly that: effectively communicate a single, consistent direction on how to interpret the rules correctly; and they are extremely successful at it. There have been ~2,300 matches that have transpired thus far this season, and by the majority of accounts, the season is going great.

Unfortunately, effort doesn't always translate to satisfactory results. Trust me when I tell you that I don't doubt their well meaning good intentions. But more people have observed something different about this season's refereeing consistency compared to others; something that disturbs and frustrates them. I just wanted to give them a starting point to present their concerns and frustrations in one spot.

A lot of that success can be credited to the hard work of the folks at FIRST creating the Head Ref manuals, Head Ref training materials and constant communications all season long to the refs. Not to mention the hard work and dedication of the Head Refs themselves both in front of and behind the scenes. You don't see all the extra time they give up to participate in Head Referee Training at the beginning of the year, a weekly teleconference each week during the season, studying of the manual on their own time, and attending meetings Wed and Thursday nights at each regional.

That's wonderful. Why have some permitted falling tetras of doom and others disabled a robot upon a 1/32" violation of the vertical plane above the operator's station? Why do some call penalties for seemingly G25 legal pushing while others in the same week allow demolition derby-like tactics to go on unpunished? What is getting lost in translation this year? Why do we not seem to see any improvement as we move along? As we've progressed through this season, we're still seeing a bunch of reports of regionals and referee calls that are almost night and day when it comes to gameplay. There seems to be little success in even beginning to shrink the inconsistency. Maybe I'm wrong - truthfully, others have seen more of this than I have, but there have been many. Maybe with these changes, things will start to improve. But we can't say they have until we OBSERVE that they have.

Please give this tired argument a break! What else do you possibly want them to do?

I thought we were all about hearing equal sides of a debate, as long as we avoided personal attacks and the like. I really can't do anything anyway, like I said, all I can do is wait and see what transpires this weekend, just like the rest of us. As always, rule changes mean nothing until we observe how they are applied. We'll re-evaluate and react after the regionals are over. However, based upon other rules written in a similar manner to the ones that were just changed, and based upon the reported mixed interpretations of these rules refs have tended to apply at different regionals, I tend to believe that nothing much will change. Unless, of course, FIRST is doing something additional or different behind the scenes to coordinate these new changes that they are not telling us about. That would be wonderful, and best of luck to them in their efforts.

And you are right about one thing... you can expect to see the the same old same old again this weekend! Another set of fantastic experiences for thousands of kids across the country. And once again, Mission Accomplished.

It's that smaller but no less important set of disappointing, heartbreaking, and sometimes dangerous experiences for these kids that I'm more concerned about. Yes, this stuff happens sometimes - it cannot completely be avoided. But this year, such things seem to be happening much more frequently, and I'm hoping FIRST will take the initiative to minimize their frequency of occurrence as the season draws to a close.

Best of luck to FIRST in trying to improve the experience for everyone - THANK YOU for trying; now let's see you take it on home and git r done. If and when that happens, everyone feel free to tell me to shut up if I ever open my big mouth again.