Some thoughts on rules, refs, and ranking

[cmrnpizzo14]

Originally Posted by Starke

I believe he is dividing up the $5000 dollar entrance fee into the number of matches played.

I believe he is saying that they're paying $6000 for a regional and they get 8 matches, so they're paying $750 per match to play.

Aah, thank you, I was very confused about that. However, are you really viewing the registration fee as paying for matches? I don't think that viewing 2 matches that were affected by a referee's decision as a complete waste is a good outlook on FIRST. Frankly, the referee's are just volunteers. If you are taking this so seriously that winning qualifying matches are that big of a deal to you, I think you need a bit of a reality check.

FIRST isn't about winning qualifying matches or even blue banners from the Championship. It's about inspiring science and technology in the youth. I guarantee that the kids on the team won't remember specific matches in anything other than a positive light several years from now. If they don't, they aren't doing FIRST for the right reason.

Please, can we stop complaining about the referees and the rules? GDC works hard to make these games every year. Just because something didn't go your way doesn't mean that it was a bad game. More often than not it was most likely actually your fault. No one is trying to "fix" FIRST matches. Let's stop acting like the referees are all wrong and that they are out to get you. 90% of the time the referee's make the correct call and when they don't it really doesn't matter.

Just my $0.02, sorry if it doesn't agree with yours.