[David Brinza]

Originally Posted by Bharat Nain

Then who should take responsibility of all the bad calls in a game? FIRST for not training them well-enough? GDC for creating the rules? I do agree the being a referee is a hard job and I am thankful to all those who volunteered for it. However, the game is the only fair chance for all teams at an event to compete. I can understand a few mistakes in a game but when they miss something obvious repeatedly and call it differently from regional-to-regional and division-to-division, I think someone has to take responsibility. To me being a referee is a huge responsibility and a huge honor. With great power comes great responsibility.

I usually do not like posting these things because CD doesnt take criticism too well. However, I hope next year is a better year.

I think I've heard Dean state more than once "life isn't always fair". FIRST isn't exempt from this statement. It's very hard to accept that fact. We need to accept that there will be errors in judgment. It's a different matter if there are clear biases being shown by referees. FIRST deals with this by virtue of a "Conflict of Interest" form that is signed by referees and even robot inspectors. If anyone believes a referee is biased (intentially making calls in favor or against any teams), that needs to be addressed to FIRST - privately, not here in CD.

We live in a world where distrust has made life more difficult than it needs to be. Hence the need for so many laws, so many pages in a contract and so many people needed to protect our interests (lawyers, judges, police, etc.). I'd like to think that within the FIRST community, a higher level of trust exists than in the rest of the world. For the most part, that's been my experience and that's why I believe in FIRST.