[archiver]

Posted by Chris, Coach on team #308, Walled Lake Monster, from Walled Lake Schools and TRW Automotive Electronics.

Posted on 3/16/99 11:55 AM MST


In Reply to: Same this year... posted by Nate Smith on 3/16/99 10:31 AM MST:



Yes, this rule still applies, but it is somewhat outdated in the fact that it assumes teams only go to one regional. Perhaps teams should get an extra 48 (or 72) hours for each weekend that regionals are held. For every regional that a team attends, one 48 hour period is removed from your alloted 'extra build time'.

Example: The normal ship date is Feb. 22. Assume there are 7 weekends in which regionals are held. This would equate to an extra two weeks to work on the machine (7 x 48 hours). If a team goes to 3 regionals, than they get 6 days taken off of their extra time, giving them only 8 days after the Feb 22 build time.

At first, this may not seem fair. You might state that you punish teams that attend regionals by taking away extra build time. I look at it this way: what if a team goes to a regional on all 7 weekends (as some teams do). These teams get Thursday, Friday, and Saturday to do some work on their robot. Then they get the robot from Saturday night through Monday. This gives these teams an extra 5 days of work per regional. Let's say that you can't really work over night because they shut down the pits, so we'll take away 24 hours. This still gives 4 days of extra time per regional. If you attend 7 regionals, this equals 28 extra days of work time. That's one whole month! If we believe in the 4 days extra per regional, I'm only asking that these teams give up 2 days. Therefore, there is still an advantage to attending the regional in terms of work time (not to mention the driver practice, scouting, etc), but this advantage is reduced.

Okay, maybe there is no team that attends a regional every week (or is there?), and two extra weeks may seem a bit much at first. Then perhaps FIRST should determine which team is going to the most regionals. Use the number of regionals this team is attending instead of the number of weekends that regionals are being held.

As Joe stated, the biggest 'unfairness' in the competition is funding. Perhaps some rules need to be in place to lessen this advantage. It occurs in virtually all sports: the NFL has the salary cap, Formula One has technology limitations, the NCAA limits football scholarships to 85 per team, etc. All of these rules are in the interest of fairness of the competition so that the 'small market teams' can compete on a level playing field with the 'big market teams' that have a funding advantage. There are already a few rules in place within FIRST toward this end, but I would maybe like to see more.

: That was the case this year too...teams who participate only in the National tournament did not have to ship out their machines until Wednesday, while everyone else had to ship on Monday...

: : If I remember correctly, back in '96 teams which went to Disney but did not attend
: : a regional were allowed to ship the robot a few days later than teams which also
: : attended a regional. This was intended to compensate for the extra time the teams
: : who participated in the reginal would get at the end of that competition.