Is alliance selection usually this bad?

[mwtidd]

Originally Posted by XaulZan11

I've seen and heard of teams doing this and it rubs me the wrong way. I would be pretty upset to work 6 weeks and give it my all during the competition only to be passed up by a team because they wanted to pick their friends. I just don't think it is fair to the other teams if you choose not to play competitively and to the best of your ability. If this was a Michigan event where you gets points for getting selected, I would be extremely upset. But, at the end of the day, its the teams right to play however they want.

I will just say the friends picking thing is a very real experience. Imagine going to college, applying for a job, and finding out you didn't get it because the person you were competing with for the job had an in at the company. Then its not 6 weeks but often 6 years.

In the real world perceived value and connections are almost as valuable as real value in a business deal. In a strange (and unfortunate corollary) the similar thing happens in FIRST, especially for second picks.

Originally Posted by CallieJ

That makes sense. I remember that they had trouble deploying their minibot in one of their matches on Saturday morning. I do wish they had conveyed that to me in our meeting so that we could have incorporated it more heavily into our pick list.

Honestly I don't think it would have made that much of a difference either way, which is why I didn't push the issue at the time. 604 and 691 are both experienced, well-developed teams who have done well this year. I for one was extremely happy with how finals turned out, given how 254 performed in finals at San Diego and in the semis and quarters at SVR.

I mostly wanted to reassure the OP that we and 1323 were aware of 691's capabilities and that they were not overlooked. The specifics of our selection are a much smaller issue than those faced by some of the teams who were present for selection. I felt unprepared to be there given the uncertainty of the rankings and the strength of the #1 alliance, and I had spent the last two days running a full-scale online scouting program as well as working with the scouts from 254. I can't imagine what it might have been like to go into that selection if you hadn't been expecting and trying to prepare for it all weekend.

I will say after running the numbers 604 and 691, look to be equivalent. As most people know I usually go by the #s and only the #s, and this is a perfect example where emotionally I was connected to a robot and would have preferred them. In one match I saw 691 put on quite a show, and really liked it. However after your reflections I think that you made an appropriate call.