What percentage of FRC teams should attend championships?

[Caleb Sykes]

In the years 2017+, it will be much easier for FIRST to select the size of championships because the district model will be much more widespread. Assuming another level of competition is not added, what percentage of FRC teams do you believe should qualify for championships in the years 2017-2020?

I posed this question in this thread, but liked it so much I thought I should make a poll for it.

[Sperkowsky]

Originally Posted by Sunshine

I have no problem with 25% of teams attending BUTNthet don't all have to bring a robot to compete. If the experience outside of the game field is so enriching (and I believe it is) some groups could come for other things than the competition of their bot. Just another idea.

Why would a team spend 20k to watch

[GeeTwo]

Originally Posted by Sperkowsky

Why would a team spend 20k to watch

Already answered:

Originally Posted by Sunshine

If the experience outside of the game field is so enriching (and I believe it is) some groups could come for other things than the competition of their bot.

These enrichments include the exposure to the top teams, with opportunity to "pick their brains" as to how to improve both our team and the students' individual engineering capabilities. And oh, yeah, there's that inspiration thing that Dean and Woodie go on about ;->.

That said, attending a championship without having pay the entry fee to compete is a significant savings for those in the conterminous US (33% in our case, paying for 25 students and about eight coaches/mentors to take a bus from Southeast Louisiana). Getting the school and school board to approve that much field trip time to "attend" would be a far greater challenge than raising the money. If we were "attending", we would probably try to send about a dozen students and three mentors, and bus-pool with three other teams.

For the record, I'm not voting. I'd love to take the team every year. I'd also love to see some "superregionals" each of which send about a dozen teams to the "real" championships, and have 25-50% of the teams get to a super. One big problem with this model is that the championship gets smaller. The really big thing about the super that bothers me is teams (many from outside North America, but quite a few within) that qualify for championships but can't afford the travel. Supers would make this situation even worse.

The bottom line is that I'm thrilled to be going this year, and taking two of my three children (even though the other one founded the team), and about two dozen other teens that I've come to know as extended family. We've roughly doubled our budget, and have raised nearly as much money in the past four weeks as we did in the previous eleven months to make this work. I'd be thrilled to do this every year. I also understand that getting about 4000 FRC teams in one place jus' ain't happ'nin'.

[grstex]

For a sense of scale:

18.2% of Division I teams compete in March Madness
33.3% of MLB teams make the playoffs
37.5% of NFL teams make the playoffs
26.7% of NBA teams make the playoffs

[asid61]

30% of higher; allow the regional winners (plus wildcards and hall of fame, etc.) to attend, and give priority on the waitlist to teams that have not gone in the greatest number of years. I believe having everybody go once every four years would be good.
Attending championships without competing would be a bitter fruit to swallow for me at least, especially given that I would have to miss one or two days of school.

[EricLeifermann]

Originally Posted by grstex

For a sense of scale:

18.2% of Division I teams compete in March Madness
33.3% of MLB teams make the playoffs
37.5% of NFL teams make the playoffs
26.7% of NBA teams make the playoffs

And the percentage of those teams in those leagues that make the championship? FAR FAR less than that....

[grstex]

Originally Posted by EricLeifermann

And the percentage of those teams in those leagues that make the championship? FAR FAR less than that....

Making the playoffs qualifies you to compete to become the single champion of your sports league.
Qualifying for Championships enters you into a competition to be part of a single champion alliance.
I don't feel it's a false equivalence. If making the playoffs is no big deal, ask a Mets fan.

If the World Series is the equivalent the Qualifying for championships, then that's 6%, or around 200 FIRST teams. Cut the size of Championships to 1/3. That's about the size of champs when I was a student. In 2001, 14 years ago.

[cgmv123]

Originally Posted by grstex

26.7% of NBA teams make the playoffs

53.3333% (16/30) of NBA (and NHL) teams make the playoffs.

[grstex]

Originally Posted by cgmv123

53.3333% (16/30) of NBA (and NHL) teams make the playoffs.

Darn! You got me!

[themccannman]

Originally Posted by grstex

For a sense of scale:

18.2% of Division I teams compete in March Madness
33.3% of MLB teams make the playoffs
37.5% of NFL teams make the playoffs
26.7% of NBA teams make the playoffs

I don't think playoffs are even close to equivalent to a "championship" event. Playoffs are like district champs. I can see 30% of teams in a district going to DCMP.

[Lil' Lavery]

Originally Posted by Sperkowsky

Why would a team spend 20k to watch

There's a lot more to do at Championship than "watch." For starters, they're always looking for volunteers. Beyond that, there's seminars to attend, teams to talk with, suppliers that are giving out information, scholarship row, and the FIRST finale. I attended without a team last year and had a great time and actually got to spend far more time talking with and learning from other teams than I would have if I had a robot to worry about. And, of course, simply watching the matches in person is incredible.

Originally Posted by nuclearnerd

20k is a low ball number. It costs:
5k$ for entry
6k$ for a coach bus for 4 days (flights cost the same for smaller / further teams)
5 k$ for ten hotel rooms
2k$ for 8 meals per person for 20 people

And I'm not including, lost wages / supply teacher coverage.

Why would you need to pay a registration fee to attend the event if the team wasn't competing?
Why would you have to bring 20 people/your own coach bus/10 hotel rooms?

[Sunshine]

Originally Posted by Sperkowsky

Why would a team spend 20k to watch

Who says it would have to cost $20k? Ridiculous comment.

[nuclearnerd]

Originally Posted by Sunshine

Who says it would have to cost $20k? Ridiculous comment.

20k is a low ball number. It costs:
5k$ for entry
6k$ for a coach bus for 4 days (flights cost the same for smaller / further teams)
5 k$ for ten hotel rooms
2k$ for 8 meals per person for 20 people

And I'm not including, lost wages / supply teacher coverage.

[EricH]

Originally Posted by nuclearnerd

20k is a low ball number. It costs:
5k$ for entry
6k$ for a coach bus for 4 days (flights cost the same for smaller / further teams)
5 k$ for ten hotel rooms
2k$ for 8 meals per person for 20 people

And I'm not including, lost wages / supply teacher coverage.

Watching (NOT COMPETING) is free registration. The original comment was specifically stating watching. Knocks off $5K.

Also, 10 hotel rooms? For 20 people? I'd think that 6-7 would be more likely (unless the district had some really nasty rules about students/room, or there was some other oddball case involved)--usually you'd get about 4 students/room, but add in a couple of rooms for mentors (typically 1-2/room). Knocks off about another $1K.

So... 6K for the bus, 4K for the hotel, hard to argue the meals unless the people in question buy them themselves. So that's $10K-12K, not counting lost pay (which... I'm not entirely familiar with how that works for teachers, but don't teachers get vacation time, or is all of that in summer/breaks?).

[Alex2614]

Originally Posted by EricH

Watching (NOT COMPETING) is free registration. The original comment was specifically stating watching. Knocks off $5K.

Also, 10 hotel rooms? For 20 people? I'd think that 6-7 would be more likely (unless the district had some really nasty rules about students/room, or there was some other oddball case involved)--usually you'd get about 4 students/room, but add in a couple of rooms for mentors (typically 1-2/room). Knocks off about another $1K.

So... 6K for the bus, 4K for the hotel, hard to argue the meals unless the people in question buy them themselves. So that's $10K-12K, not counting lost pay (which... I'm not entirely familiar with how that works for teachers, but don't teachers get vacation time, or is all of that in summer/breaks?).

Okay, so who's going to pay 12k to go watch? Same argument. We have a hard time getting exempt absences when we are competing. Let alone just going to watch. They would never excuse our kids to go watch. Good luck getting many school boards to okay that. In Monongalia county, they just passed a policy limiting the number of days students can miss for a single activity. While we are not a school team (we are a community organization), we are sponsored by them and we are still governed by them somewhat loosely. We're going to have a hard time when we go into districts, let alone trying to get three days off of school to not even compete! That is 100% not going to happen.