[EStokely]

Penalties...hmmm I hadn't considered those.

Yea, since many matches ride on penalties and when you are busy trying to watch your team you will most likely miss a penalty across the field.
They are like live scoring (like last year) hard to prove one way or the other. (and I don't see any team being able to argue one way or the other for a live scoring disagreement)

And yet I still feel the idea has some merit.
I am trying to avoid the "We LOST!?" as we walk back to the pit knowing that we won (and for the record there has also been a "we won!?" moment after knowing we lost)
I don't believe having a ref show the scoring sheets to an alliance rep for an initial would take more than 10 or 15 seconds. While waiting for the refs to score the two seperate alliance reps could be comparing notes and most likely have an agreed on score as the refs approach.

And even though I also 'sell' robotics to new parents as not being about scores and winning the reality is that we do score these games and winning has consequences. If we think we can get as excited about the game without keeping score and declaring a top score winner I think we're wrong. Competition is good for the game.

And "ref scores are final" is an appropriote response to ANY one asking to challange a score. Otherwise the extra "3 minutes" per match suddenly gets longer. There is no mechanism that allows anyone to talk to refs about scores after every match. And once you open the door for some teams to talk to a ref then why can't every team?

I would like to see a first week regional try something like this idea. and then share the results. Besides the hope that fewer scoring disputs will occur it also allows another aspect of teh game to be introduced, the Alliance rep position, assuming a three team alliance there should be no ties...yea even as I wrote this I realised you could have a three way tie as each team wants its own rep...but this could be a good thing anyway.