Should FRC Account for School Size?

[Joon Park]

I definitely agree with most of the responses above that size is not the factor. But sooner or later, divisioning may become more necessary as the size of FRC grows. I know more regions are planning on switching to district formats, which just seems to complement that. Not sure how it would serve for logistics or publicity purposes, but the teams and participants may get more out of it in terms of competitiveness and reward.

[FrankJ]

So how would this work? Divide the field into classes? Separate events? Have something like FTC? Require each alliance have one robot from each class?

Would you limit limit budgets in the lower classes? What the sponsors can provide? Handicap in some way the higher performing teams?

[rachelholladay]

I too must chime in with yet another "Nah...". I don't think its in FIRST's nature to discriminate how you compete against, particularly when resources are a larger determining factor than school size. Plus, what about the teams that aren't associated with a school? (Space Cookies 1868 are always the ones that come to mind)

Aside from all that, I think the organization of it would be a nightmare. Our home regional is the Bayou, which is fairly small and local. If we broke up by team size then there wouldn't be enough teams of the same size to support a regional and many would have to end up traveling (when they normally wouldn't).

[Richard Wallace]

Originally Posted by Joon Park

... sooner or later, divisioning may become more necessary as the size of FRC grows. ...

Originally Posted by FrankJ

So how would this work? Divide the field into classes? ... Handicap in some way the higher performing teams?

The experiment with tier-based qualifying schedules in 2007, now infamously recalled as the "algorithm of death", clearly showed how NOT to accomplish this.

I am not convinced that FRC will ever really need to divide teams into tiers. As EricH pointed out above, one of the game design objectives is to allow participation by teams with widely-varying levels of resources.

My experience has been that the resources (money, space, mentors, ...) a given team can muster sometimes vary widely from year to year. There can be many reasons for this. As others have said, school size is not among the more significant reasons.

[Nemo]

If FRC got so huge that you could afford to divide the individual regions into divisions and still have enough teams to fill up the local events at each level, then I suppose you could have a tiered system that simply didn't have any specific criteria for dividing the teams. You'd just put the teams with the best historical track records into the top division, and the other teams would need to prove themselves over time to be selected to move into the top division. The top division could initially be populated with teams according to some algorithm taking into account past competition performances and awards, leaving some space for adding new teams in the future.

But that would have some disadvantages, such as not allowing newer teams to bump elbows with the really awesome veteran teams.

[Ekcrbe]

Originally Posted by Nemo

If FRC got so huge that you could afford to divide the individual regions into divisions and still have enough teams to fill up the local events at each level, then I suppose you could have a tiered system that simply didn't have any specific criteria for dividing the teams. You'd just put the teams with the best historical track records into the top division, and the other teams would need to prove themselves over time to be selected to move into the top division. The top division could initially be populated with teams according to some algorithm taking into account past competition performances and awards, leaving some space for adding new teams in the future.

But that would have some disadvantages, such as not allowing newer teams to bump elbows with the really awesome veteran teams.

Everything else made me say "No." This idea made me think. The way I see it, it seems analogous to a Promotion and Relegation system used prominently in European football (soccer) leagues. I still don't like it much, because I would rather see a large team population dealt with the district way, to keep everything reasonably organized.

Also, who's to say big schools do better? There's all these other awkward stepping stones like multi-school and non-school teams, team age, and team success. My team has been around for 15 years, but only the last three have we been a school-associated team. The school we work in has about 1200 students, but we also recruit from another school (in a different district). Our history has also been incredibly varied. If you base the split on this year's performance, we were mediocre (missed MSC) and also good (Division Finalists). If you look at the last three years, we didn't go to Championships one year, and our robot didn't move the other. The year before that we were on Einstein. In short: Few teams are consistent enough performers to eve make a tiered system effective, let alone ethical.

And one more thing: Remember the I in FIRST.

[daniel_dsouza]

I can safely say that size isn't the best factor you could use to determine competitiveness.

For example, Corona del Sol (my school) has a population of about 3400 and growing. We have been a team since '07, but we aren't what this thread would consider successful. We have to pull students from another school just to have enough kids to build the robot!

If you want another factor, in addition to ones suggested within this thread (mentors, budget, resources, experience), consider team spacing/influence. There are 2 other schools within several miles of Corona that have FRC teams. We compete for sponsors, funds, and students. Compared to a team (maybe 20mi away) that draws students from 5 schools, the reason for our lower scores becomes apparent.

[JohnBoucher]

No. This is a game of the mind. Size does not matter. If anything is a factor, it's experience.

A low resource team with a well-thought-out robot and a smart strategy will beat a high resource team any day.

[Aroki]

Originally Posted by SuperNerd256

A low resource team with a well-thought-out robot and a smart strategy will beat a high resource team any day.

A high resource team with a well-thought-out robot and a smart strategy would have a distinct advantage over the low resource team, while having the less problems to overcome. I don't think a tier system would work due to the complexity of making one, but I do recognize the gap between high and low resource teams' ability to compete competitively

Originally Posted by Aroki

A high resource team with a well-thought-out robot and a smart strategy would have a distinct advantage over the low resource team, while having the less problems to overcome. I don't think a tier system would work due to the complexity of making one, but I do recognize the gap between high and low resource teams' ability to compete competitively

A high-resource team with a well-thought-out robot and a smart strategy competing against a low-resource team with a well-thought-out robot and a smart strategy would make a very even, yet entertaining match. Especially if the low resource team wins.

Although I do see what you mean by this.

[DampRobot]

Originally Posted by SuperNerd256

A high-resource team with a well-thought-out robot and a smart strategy competing against a low-resource team with a well-thought-out robot and a smart strategy would make a very even, yet entertaining match. Especially if the low resource team wins.

Although I do see what you mean by this.

Assuming most rookie teams start out as roughly equal in terms of size and resources (a few dedicated students and mentors in a small, poorly supplied shop), soon both the intellectual and physical resources will become concentrated in upper level teams. To use SuperNerd's terminology, " a low-resource team with a well-thought-out robot and a smart strategy" will soon become a "high-resource team with a well-thought-out robot and a smart strategy." Teams tend to attract physical resources (money, tools, sponsors) after winning with intellectual resources (namely, a "well-thought-out robot and a smart strategy"). Soon, the both types or resources become concentrated.

[holygrail]

It seems clear that school size alone is not the best factor to consider when trying to account for the resource gap in FRC, but that doesn't change the fact that some teams have far more resources than others. It also seems clear that a team with high tech manufacturing capabilities, full size practice fields, and practice bots has a distinct advantage over an equally brilliant and dedicated team that lacks the space and/or money for those things.

So to re-frame the OP...
What, if anything, should FRC do to minimize the gap between the high resource teams and those that struggle to afford a single entry fee as we move into the future? How do you think that decision could impact the sustainability of FRC in coming years?

Clearly this could be an extremely complex issue. But I also know the CD community doesn't shy away from an issue just because it is difficult and complex.

Thank you all for your insights.

[Ravage457]

Unless u did it like how they do it in high school football, like here in Texas, the size of the school(# of students in the school) would determine what class district the school would be in, for example South San High School(Team 457) would be in district 28-5A, Brandeis High School (Team 3481) would be in 25-5A. Now from their if both teams made it to the State Championship, depending on the enrollment in this two school would determine what division the school would be place, for example Team 457 would be District 5A Divison 2, and Team 3481 would be District 5A Division 1, now the other teams that are not part of any school district, Could be place in 6M1 or 6M2(6 Man Division 1/6 Man Division 2, since those school can only field 6 players on thier team) due to the size of thier Team, it can be done, but the state would have to be in a district format, and FIRST would have to know how many students are in each school and in non school affliated team, other than that u couldnt place team in divisions by the size of the school if you were doing this nation wide, maybe if you were doing it in a state that has district format

[EricH]

Originally Posted by Ravage457

Unless u did it like how they do it in high school football, like here in Texas, the size of the school(# of students in the school) would determine what class district the school would be in, for example South San High School(Team 457) would be in district 28-5A, Brandeis High School (Team 3481) would be in 25-5A. [...] it can be done, but the state would have to be in a district format, and FIRST would have to know how many students are in each school and in non school affliated team, other than that u couldnt place team in divisions by the size of the school if you were doing this nation wide, maybe if you were doing it in a state that has district format

We just got done saying that size of school has nothing to do with the size of the team, and the size of the team has little or nothing to do with how competitive they are. A team of 15 can compete with the big boys, or a team of 40 or more can be the last seed. A team of 15 could also be at the bottom of the standings, while the team of 40 could be first at every event. I think you get the picture.