Championships - Qualification Only Event?

[Jaxom]

Originally Posted by PayneTrain

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.

Ah, now I get what you were saying. I was thinking that the district events would have been called the "District Chairman's Award", but I just looked and found I was wrong. Sorry about my confusion.

[Bill_B]

Is there a list of Hall of Fame and "legacy" teams that are invited to Champs? My presumption is that if one of them should qualify by other means, it will release a spot to the standby list. Am I correct?

[Gray Adams]

Originally Posted by Bill_B

Is there a list of Hall of Fame and "legacy" teams that are invited to Champs? My presumption is that if one of them should qualify by other means, it will release a spot to the standby list. Am I correct?

Legacy and HOF (Championshp Chairman's winners) are listed in the chart. Double qualifying does indeed open up spots in most cases.

http://www.usfirst.org/roboticsprogr...ility-criteria

[EricH]

Originally Posted by Bill_B

Is there a list of Hall of Fame and "legacy" teams that are invited to Champs? My presumption is that if one of them should qualify by other means, it will release a spot to the standby list. Am I correct?

Why, yes, yes, and yes.

HoF and Legacy teams, as noted at http://www.usfirst.org/roboticsprogr...ility-criteria, are as follows:

HoF: 16, 51, 67, 103, 111, 120, 151, 175, 191, 236, 254, 341, 365, 842, 359.
Legacy: 20, 45, 126, 148, 151, 190, 191.
Note: 151 and 191 are on both lists.

If one of those teams gets multiple slots, then one or more of those slots would open up to the waitlist. Ditto if someone gets multiple merit-based qualifications in one year (or is the winner of a Championship or EI at the Championship level the previous year).

[Bill_B]

Thank you Eric and Gray. Now I have to wrestle with my browser to find out why it denied me my bookmark for that page. I was sure I had seen it before. Apparently, I suffer from a sort of disjoint logic when it comes to navigating the FRC site. Blankety-blank browser isn't helping.

[Dave Campbell]

I compete in Ironman triathlons. The founders of the original Ironman race established a permanant rule to keep about 10% of the World Championship slots open for "everyday" athletes who may never be able to qualify based on finish times. These slots are filled via lottery drawings from all athletes who apply for a slot. The idea is that everyone has the chance to attend, participate or compete. I hope that FIRST continues as is or establishes a similar process to allow all teams the opportunity to compete in the championship event. There are many forms of Inspiration. Perhaps one of these "everyday" teams takes the time to attend a great presentation at the conference. They take that knowledge to build an amazing team next year and inspire their students to pursue advanced education in science or technology. Should that team have been excluded because they didn't have good luck in the match pairing algorithm at their only regional event? This competition is not only about building a great robot.

[Alan Anderson]

I thought the "tiered" registration scheme of a few years ago was reasonable, with the issue of too few slots handled by lottery instead of by quickness to click during the first few minutes of open registration.

[Bill_B]

I had the (crazy?) idea that I would like to see a team listing each having a qualification "reason" for being at the championships. Digestion of the spectacular scouting information compiled by 1114 has me now scratching my head about the numbers of teams that are attending by merit-based rules versus those that are going because they signed up in open registration as veterans. It just looks like there are a lot more of them than I would have supposed.

Would anyone hazard a guess as to what the proportion is, approximately? I just want to compare my results to an external guesstimate to see if I'm even in the right "dome" so to speak.

[Zebra_Fact_Man]

Since I didn't see the data posted in this thread and I can't find the last thread with this data, here it is.

This year, there are a maximum of 366 merit-based positions (24 for past Chairman's Awards winners, original teams, last world champs and last EIA; 312 for all 52 Regionals [6 per]; 30 for FiM & MAR) to fill 400 total spots. Only 257 (+/-5) of these 366 spots were filled (meaning 109 merit-based slots were either filled by already qualifying teams or chose not to attend), resulting in a total of 143 (+/-5) buy-ins.

To recap:
366/400 merit-based spots
257/366 filled
143/400 buy-ins

If there were more events, or more ways to qualify, there'd be less buy-ins. But with the way FIRST has been growing, before long this won't be an issue. Then we'll have to figure out how to reduce the number of merit-based teams who qualify or increase the size of the Championship beyond 400 (I predict this will occur within the next 10 years).

Did I miss anything?

I think they should make an IRI-like event after champs where the top 8 alliances of each division are invited to play. The top 96 teams of the world, battling it out in the standard competition style.

Then keep the championships open the way they are.

[Raul]

Originally Posted by Jaxom

... 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)..

Interesting and popular perspective amoung some folks who mentor in FRC. However, doesn't the "C" in FRC stand for Competition? I would think the name is what it is for a reason.

Raul

[IKE]

I am not trying to be a jerk, but I would like to flip the discussion on its head for a moment.

If the championship is about inspriation of the un-inspired, and you decide that need for inspiration should surpass performance, then shouldn't all of the RCAs, EIs, and Event winners stay home? They already get it! They already had an inspiring experience at their regional, so they really shouldn't need further inspiration. Also any team with a WFFA mentor should not attend as surely they too have been inspired above average level. I would go so far as to say that the most inspirational championship would consist of those teams that have not yet played in any Elims in 2012. These are the teams in the most need of inspiration and thus the most deserving to attend the inspirational championship. With between 12 and 40 teams not making it into elims at an event, and some of those would be duplicates in the district system, with around 50 events, this would be on the order of 1,000 teams which is too many for a Championship event, so we could just allow first year teams, or teams that have not played in elims the last 2 years. This should be around 300-400 teams as many will not have raised funds with the intention of attending a championship as their going in assumption would be that they want to play in elims at their local regional.

I don't think the league would survive such a system.

Just so it is clear, I am not a robot performance guy only. I personally have been advocating a system that allows for more than just the winners to go on. I also would like to see some qualification points for teams that submit and meet the criteria for a chairman's award. I know way too many teams that do a lot of good stuff, but do not document it as they know "we will never win the RCA because team XYZ always does". This becomes a self fulfilling prophecy as no one competes against team XYZ. If every team (even hall of famers) had to at least complete the citeria for chairman's (just like there is a minimum criteria for a robot allowed allowed to compete) in order to get to advance to a championship, then you would see some serious chanes to the "Robot Competition".

I tend to think of the Championship events as more of a reward for executing the vision of FIRST than a lottery jockpot or an inspirational event in itself. Offering it as the reward is the inspiration for the pursuit of excellence. though I have always been more inspired by a career path that if you do well in school, get good grades, pick a useful degree, and do useful efforts than buying a mega-millions ticket.

[wilsonmw04]

Seems like there is a lot of folks focused on the ROBOT and how the ROBOT preforms in determining who goes to worlds. I thought FIRST wasn't all about the ROBOT. When did that change? I must have missed that update...

[JesseK]

Originally Posted by wilsonmw04

Seems like there is a lot of folks focused on the ROBOT and how the ROBOT preforms in determining who goes to worlds. I thought FIRST wasn't all about the ROBOT. When did that change? I must have missed that update...

On the field, have you ever thought "hey, that alliance should get to go to champs instead of us -- so we will let them win"?

There are 2 ways teams can earn a spot, and one way is totally in line with what you're saying. My team has never won due to robot performance (though I won't be finishing a Master's degree and planning a wedding next build season, so that may change), and it isn't something we're ashamed of.

That said, there will always be a need for teams who want to buy a slot. I've already beaten that horse though.

[wilsonmw04]

Originally Posted by JesseK

That said, there will always be a need for teams who want to buy a slot. I've already beaten that horse though.

I truly hope you are right. It would be a disservice to a large section of the FIRST population if this went away.