Upsets, Oh My!

[Grim Tuesday]

Most of the time when this sort of thing (low seeds winning) happens, people immediately start crying about the seeding system.

I think it is quite the opposite.

The seeding system is quite good this year, it is simply that almost overnight, many regionals have gotten much deeper. Deeper by virtue that teams seeded 8th through 16th actually have a chance at winning the event. Where in many years, the first second and third seed are orders of magnitude better than "the pack" in the 20th seed and beyond, this year they are only slightly better.

I think a major factor of this change is Robot in 3 Days. It showed teams who might have made mediocre robots an easy way to make a simple and good robot. We can discuss if this is a good change (competition up, innovation down) but I think it was a major factor. It certainly made the events more fun to watch.