Championships - Qualification Only Event?

[Mark Sheridan]

Originally Posted by Jaxom

Apparently I should have put my implied sarcasm tag in bold or a larger font.

Last year Bill kept saying that the concert wasn't the reason for the pit fields, and to expect them to continue. Anyone heard anything different?

I hope they changed it, it was very loud in the pits for teams right next to the arenas. It was not fair for those teams.

In regards to qualifying for championships, I am all for it to be merit based. My old team 766 would only go if we won a regional. I really think its more important to have a championship that actualy feels like that it is made up of the best robots of the country.

I would go as far as suggesting that the EI award and rookie all-star to not be guaranteed admissions to championships. I rather open the spots for two "wild card" candidates. Perhaps the EI, rookie all-star and all teams that reach the semifinals are in the running for the wild card spots. I am not sure the selection method. I suppose it could be either by judges or a scoring system similar to the district model.

[Nemo]

Originally Posted by Chris Fultz

One of the changes in the system with FiM and MAR is that only teams that "qualify" are able to attend the district championship and and world championship.

Right now the FIRST Championship is a combination of teams that qualified by winning certain awards, winning events, winning the previous year, or are grandfathered in as Hall of Fame teams or original FIRST teams, and teams that register based on when they last attended through the open registration process.

Has anyone looked at what the number of teams are that qualify, based on just current year performance, for the last few years of the CHP?

The number would only include teams that won an event (3 or 4 per regional), won RCA, EI or RAS, or qualified out of the FiM system.

Here is a look at 2011. Does Michigan qualify anybody other than its 3-4 winners / 3x CA / EI / RAS from MSC? By this count I have 95 out of 352 teams attending the 2011 Championship via pre-registration or waitlist.

2011 Qualifiers.xlsx

[SamMullen]

Originally Posted by EricH

Three. Plus FTC (another FRC field, in effect, but can be spread around).

The stage just hid most of the arena. There has been no indicator of it returning this year to date. This means that half the arena, enough space for 2-3 fields, is now available for use by said fields.


Personally, I see something like this: All of FRC goes to districts, with non-US teams declaring their home area. Half the districts feed one mega-championship, and the other half feed another. The top X in points from each mega-championship go to the Big Show. Say 150 from each. This leaves 40 "at-large" bids, which can be awarded to teams that have never been to the Championship, or to teams that have not otherwise qualified but have something unique that deserves recognition, or something like that. (Or you have 4 mega-championships that each get fed from the regions, each supplying one 50-80 team field, but the teams get spread out at the Big Show.)

With districts, district championship, this mega-championship you describe, and the "Big Show", the amount of money that teams are going to have to spend on travel will go way up. Specifically, a large number of teams will probably have to fly to two events instead of just one, which is an ever more expensive form of travel. I really can't imagine FIRST would do this anytime soon.

I hope they changed it, it was very loud in the pits for teams right next to the arenas. It was not fair for those teams.

In regards to qualifying for championships, I am all for it to be merit based. My old team 766 would only go if we won a regional. I really think its more important to have a championship that actualy feels like that it is made up of the best robots of the country.

Originally Posted by Mark Sheridan

I would go as far as suggesting that the EI award and rookie all-star to not be guaranteed admissions to championships. I rather open the spots for two "wild card" candidates. Perhaps the EI, rookie all-star and all teams that reach the semifinals are in the running for the wild card spots. I am not sure the selection method. I suppose it could be either by judges or a scoring system similar to the district model.

I feel that is somewhat antithetical to FIRST's intent. Part of the point of the Rookie All-star and Engineering Inspiration awards is to send as many people to championships for what they do off the field as are sent for what they do on the field. Eliminating the qualifying nature of these awards would shift FIRST's focus more towards the competition and the robots, which is something FIRST does not seem to want to do.

[Alexa Stott]

What about using a points system similar to MAR (not sure if FiM is the same?)? You get points for certain things (how you do in eliminations, seeding in the top 8, where you get picked, winning/tying matches, awards, etc.) and the x number of teams with the highest points as well as the RCA from each event goes to championships?

It's called the championships. That means that is where the champions compete. I think that you should only go to the championships if you earn the right to go. No offense to teams who buy their way into the championships. I know it's a fun place to be, and the experience of a lifetime, but I think that in order to get that experience, you have to earn it.

Just my opinion.

-Andrew

[Donut]

Theoretically if every state had a championship you would end up with 300 teams with the current 6 qualifying from each state (assuming no overlap in qualifying awards). Team distribution means this isn't a great method anytime soon and there will need to be a way to handle international teams (Canada is 3 or 4 additional regions?) but when FIRST eventually gets their district system in place everywhere it still allows for a Championship event similar to the current one.

I would look at how FTC currently works to get an idea of how FRC qualifying may eventually be handled. Depending on the number of slots given to a state it's not enough to win your state championship, you have to be the alliance captain of the winning alliance to get the invitation.

How is FLL done?

[jspatz1]

Originally Posted by Nick Lawrence

The unfortunate part of this way of organizing champs is that teams who don't build the best of robots and don't have a solid Chairmans base may never attend champs.

That's why they call it Champs.

I firmly believe every student in FRC should attend The Championship Event at least once in their FIRST career. It's something nobody would ever forget.

"Attend" - Absolutely, every student should get to see it. "Compete in" - only if you earn the privilage. It would otherwise be meaningless.

[Mark Sheridan]

Originally Posted by SamMullen

I feel that is somewhat antithetical to FIRST's intent. Part of the point of the Rookie All-star and Engineering Inspiration awards is to send as many people to championships for what they do off the field as are sent for what they do on the field. Eliminating the qualifying nature of these awards would shift FIRST's focus more towards the competition and the robots, which is something FIRST does not seem to want to do.

I agree that eliminating the championship eligblity of the EI award would focus more to the competition. I just wanted to address the hypothetical situation of a EI award winner with a sub-par robot. I think that there are better ideas than this one. The EI award does have many merits that warrants its celebration.

The rookie all-star on the other hand is a strictly on the field performance award. With it going to the highest ranked rookie, it takes no input of the teams off the field actions. There scenarios where I could see a really good rookie team should go to the championships, especially considering what happened in San Diego (really cool by the way). However, in the case where a rookie team merely seeds higher than the other rookies and seeds poorly relative to the rest of the field, I feel there are more deserving teams that should go to the championships.

[SamMullen]

Originally Posted by Mark Sheridan

I agree that eliminating the championship eligblity of the EI award would focus more to the competition. I just wanted to address the hypothetical situation of a EI award winner with a sub-par robot. I think that there are better ideas than this one. The EI award does have many merits that warrants its celebration.

The rookie all-star on the other hand is a strictly on the field performance award. With it going to the highest ranked rookie, it takes no input of the teams off the field actions. There scenarios where I could see a really good rookie team should go to the championships, especially considering what happened in San Diego (really cool by the way). However, in the case where a rookie team merely seeds higher than the other rookies and seeds poorly relative to the rest of the field, I feel there are more deserving teams that should go to the championships.

Originally Posted by FIRST

Rookie All-Star Award
The Rookie All-Star Award celebrates the rookie team exemplifying a young but strong partnership effort, as well as implementing the mission of FIRST to inspire students to learn more about science and technology.

The Rookie All-Star award is actually more like a Chairman's or Engineering Inspiration award than you described. From what I understand, it does not really have anything to do with robot performance.

[Mark Sheridan]

Originally Posted by SamMullen

The Rookie All-Star award is actually more like a Chairman's or Engineering Inspiration award than you described. From what I understand, it does not really have anything to do with robot performance.

You are right. I should have checked the first website. I have mistaken the rookie all star for the highest rookie seed.

I going to do a 180 and advocate to NOT remove the championship eligibility for the awards.

[PayneTrain]

The change over to super-regionals/state competitions feels inevitable, but I feel like an extended discussion of this would be very good after this competition season wraps up.

For now, I'll touch on some of my ideas.

Since CMP slots are in such high demand, they should be distributed more evenly geographically. There are around 360 spots every year for what is now over 2300 teams. Only the 14% of teams not already in because of long-term pre-eligibility (HoF, Originals, Major Winners from prior year) get a spot. That means unless your team has merit or luck, students will graduate without going to CMP now (you're reading something from one of those who is at-risk for the moment).

I don't think the field orientations and the sheer number of required pits will provide for the addition of another division, at least through next year. St. Louis maps looked pretty packed to me (but I wasn't there).
I've had trouble determining exactly who controls the MAR/FiM event structure, the traditional structure, and CMP. For the sake of my plan, I'm saying that regional boards run not-CMP as authorized by FRC, while FRC conducts CMP.

For CMP, FIRST gets to take a bite out of the pool of slots before the regional boards: legacy teams, hall of fame teams, and last year's major winners are all going through these FIRST HQ owned slots. FIRST, in this scenario, would not leave at-large CMP bids out on TIMS all willy-nilly for one with fast data speeds.fingers to grab. That's important, and necessary.

Then FIRST HQ would distribute the slots to these remaining 326 (and shrinking because of HoF) regional boards to use at their discretion, with a few exceptions (i.e. the six traditional blue banner awards given at competition must be in your slots, unless FRC demotes RAS and eliminates RIA). It's like good, old-fashioned apportionment in governing bodies. So MAR, who has 100 teams this year (right?) would have 8 spots to work with however they wished after the 6 Blue Banner awards got their bids. They could give them to the next 8 teams in the rankings. They could send more RCAs or EIs or RASs. They could let teams register for the slots like we do now, or they could institute some sort of lottery a team is drafted into after their 3rd year away from CMP. Michigan would have 21 slots to distribute after the six BBAs. However, if 51 won MSC or 103 won MAR or 16 won GKC, they wouldn't be sucking away a spot from their competition and giving it to another random team. It would go to a team that performed very well over the year and earned a spot not needed by a team slightly stronger than them.

The goal of this is to encourage a wide range of talented teams from across the country. I don't have a real beef with teams that have superior preparation winning competitions they deserve, but if you already earned a spot at CMP, we should be giving the one you don't need to a team that fell a little short of winning the competition on the field, not the competition of registering in TIMS.

When we move over to this oncoming system, it will likely never be a 100% thing. I can see California keeping LAR and New York City keeping their events because international teams would get solid rates from flying into those cities. Those areas are also full of great nearby teams that could enter their robot in if they wanted to. Israel and Hawaii aren't moving over to districts either. Yet the change to district system is necessary, inevitable, and important. Just think, we would be composed of 20 or so massive gatherings of strong teams.

Also, realize that this inability to cross regional lines to take spots from teams in that region are mostly gone, with the exception of a few traditional events. Even the Mid Eastern Atlantic Conference gets as many guaranteed bids into the NCAA tournament as the Big East. I know that region x and y are far superior to region z an it's harder to get in if you're in those regions, but hey: build a better team so you can build a better robot and improve your area, or increase the number of teams in your area and benefit your region by adding slots and spreading FIRST.

These are very, very rough ideas, and I actually have been working on developing my thoughts on this to discuss after the season is over with and my mind has calmed just a bit.

[Peter Matteson]

Slightly related topic. I was talking with Bill Miller at the CT regional for quite a while yesterday and we were discussing the number of teams that actually go to champs after qualifying is historically 60% but this year is approaching 80%. They were trying to figure out the driver, if it was the BEP show last year making it a can't miss event. My theory is St Louis is better driving distance than ATL for many teams making the trip cheaper and easier to pull off for most teams.

[Jaxom]

Originally Posted by Donut

How is FLL done?

There are a number of tournaments (regional, state, provincial, country, whatever) that are designated as World Festival (it's not a championship) qualifiers. Every year they randomly pick some number (around 70-80) that will be eligible for sending the Champion's Award winner to the WF. I believe it's only a semi-random selection; they try to get every eligible tournament a slot in the WF every few years.

Note that in FLL the team coming to the WF is not necessarily the winner of the robot game. Here's the description of the Champion's Award: "This award recognizes a team that embodies the FLL experience, by fully embracing our Core Values while achieving excellence and innovation in both the Robot Game and Project."

It's important to note that this helps avoid turning FLL into a robotics competition. Which none of the FIRST programs should be.

[Jaxom]

Originally Posted by Mark Sheridan

I agree that eliminating the championship eligblity of the EI award would focus more to the competition. I just wanted to address the hypothetical situation of a EI award winner with a sub-par robot. I think that there are better ideas than this one. The EI award does have many merits that warrants its celebration.

Originally Posted by PayneTrain

Then FIRST HQ would distribute the slots to these remaining 326 (and shrinking because of HoF) regional boards to use at their discretion, with a few exceptions (i.e. the six traditional blue banner awards given at competition must be in your slots, unless FRC demotes RAS and eliminates RIA). It's like good, old-fashioned apportionment in governing bodies. So MAR, who has 100 teams this year (right?) would have 8 spots to work with however they wished after the 6 Blue Banner awards got their bids. They could give them to the next 8 teams in the rankings. They could send more RCAs or EIs or RASs. They could let teams register for the slots like we do now, or they could institute some sort of lottery a team is drafted into after their 3rd year away from CMP. Michigan would have 21 slots to distribute after the six BBAs. However, if 51 won MSC or 103 won MAR or 16 won GKC, they wouldn't be sucking away a spot from their competition and giving it to another random team. It would go to a team that performed very well over the year and earned a spot not needed by a team slightly stronger than them.

I don't see anything wrong with EI or RCA winners who have sub-par robots. If we only allow great robots to go to the Championship Event we turn FRC into a robotics competition (my same concern with FLL, and with JFLL & FTC if I were involved in them, too).

Besides, what defines "sub-par" and "great"? Is the rookie team we drafted in STL last week sub-par because it couldn't pick up or shoot balls and was seeded in the lower half? Even though they have a solid drive train & a decent ramp manipulator I don't think they'll get picked as-is for eliminations in any CE division. But they have plans on finishing the ball manipulator & shooter that they didn't have time to finish before the STL regional & take it to the CE. I'm interested in seeing what they come up with; they could easily turn into an even better opponent-side robot than they were in STL.

The year we won a RCA & went to the CE (Lunacy) we had a very nice robot. Solidly-built, good-looking, and designed around a great idea -- that the Super Cells would be *very* important and that it would take a long time to move the Empty Cells from the outpost over to the corners. Our catapult could launch them all the way, without moving away from the hole in the outpost wall. We made eliminations in both regionals we attended, but our strategy was just too easy to disrupt, and that showed up in Archimedes. We based the robot on a premise that turned out not to be the case. I have no idea if we were sub-par, great, or what. I do know we weren't competitive at the CE level. But the design was good enough that we had inquiries this year from teams interested in our catapult.

I think PayneTrain has some good ideas, but I don't think we have a complete system yet. I'm not sure how the "6 blue banner awards" don't include RCAs, EIs, and RASs, so where the "...send more RCAs or EIs or RASs." would come from confuses me. So I'm interested in what was meant. I do like the idea of more Districts & using a point system that, for example, allows robots that deserve to go but got eliminated in the QFs to qualify for the CE. We just need to find a way to allow teams that almost got RCA or EI to potentially qualify.

Whatever method that ends up being used to select teams for the CE needs to continue to take into account that the word "robot" doesn't appear anywhere in FIRST or in the FIRST mission statement. I think it's very easy to get too caught up in the robot part of any of the programs (I know I slip there from time to time) but we need to keep in mind that the robot are the means, not the end.

[PayneTrain]

Originally Posted by Jaxom

I think PayneTrain has some good ideas, but I don't think we have a complete system yet. I'm not sure how the "6 blue banner awards" don't include RCAs, EIs, and RASs, so where the "...send more RCAs or EIs or RASs." would come from confuses me. So I'm interested in what was meant. I do like the idea of more Districts & using a point system that, for example, allows robots that deserve to go but got eliminated in the QFs to qualify for the CE. We just need to find a way to allow teams that almost got RCA or EI to potentially qualify.

The 20 or so regional boards have to send those six representatives to CMP. However, if the region chooses to send more RCAs, EIs, or RASs as their representatives after their prescribed six, that's their choice. I'm not saying Michigan could use their remaining 21 spots for RCA representatives, but they could put a heavier focus on using their bids for those awards than sending high-ranked teams or lottery bids.

Like I said, having to deal with a system that involves getting the best possible showing of 360 out of 2341 teams is not something you can cobble together in an hour. I'm sure (hoping) that HQ has been trying to iron out a solution for CMP since they picked up their toys in Atlanta and moved out west, and realized "Hey, when did this program, like, double?"