Quote:
Originally Posted by DanTod97
Thats what ive been trying to come up with. The whole concept of a regional IS you only go to one, in which if you win you move on to the nationals. On the other hand FIRST isnt a normal competition, but I guess I would have to say yes, restriction to one seems to be the best solution. Most will disagree with that since weve alreayd figured out we dissagree on the part about if FIRST is meant to be fair or not. The way I see it is its a competition, if its not meant to be fair then it should not be one to begin with, perhaps we can just have extremely large robot party's.
I also see fairness going along with equality and equality going along with gracious profesionalism, I dont see anything being gracious without being fair.
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Restriction to one event...Fairness...Equality...Hmm. I see something here. Before I get to that, I think it's fair to warn you that you aren't going to like what I am about to say.
Fairness first. The world isn't fair. I know, it's a cliche. But, it's a fact of life. Live with it. FIRST is already trying to level the playing field.
Equality second. This goes with fairness. A legacy team =/= a rookie team. There are rookies that play like veterans and rookies that play like rookies. You probably aren't going to get this either.
One other thing before I proceed: You don't have to win your way to the championship. If my team wanted to go and there was a slot available, we could plunk down our $5000 plus travel and go. It's been that way time out of mind. In the early days of FRC, you didn't even have to attend a regional to go to the championship (known then as nationals).
Back to the main topic: Restriction to one regional. There are teams that are right smack in the middle of two or three regionals that aren't the same weekend. None of them is really their "home" regional. And they're all in their "region". (E.g. what Easterners often think of CA--there are FOUR regionals in one "region", plus two more in the area. West Coast teams think differently.)And you say they should be restricted to one. There are going to be some very annoyed teams out there. Or you get the teams with no regionals in their area. should they not be allowed to compete, or should they choose the closest one?
What I'm saying is, you need to think a little bit more. At this point, it'll be hard to change.
Back to fairness for a moment: Is the NFL fair? Yes? Well, then, why do some teams DOMINATE the NFL? Why are some teams never heard of except in their own areas or when they play those teams?
It is possible to be gracious without being fair. I could, in the most gracious manner possible, tell you that a match that you lost due to my bad calls (which are final) will not be rescored or replayed. That isn't fair to you...but I would be gracious. (I would, however, not be professional.) I think the term you were looking for is actually "just".
One further point about a one-regional restriction. Let's look at college sports for this one. There are conferences within college sports--Pac-10, Big 10, etc. Those are like the regionals of FIRST, correct? But every team in every conference plays
outside the conference for at least half the season, right? And those are competitions, right?