FRC Blogged - Doing the Right Thing

[Justin Montois]

I might be alone here but I think after what happened it's only fair to let both alliances go to Championship. Yes, one alliance didn't win, but to be given something, and then taking it back just seems wrong. ~400 teams will go to Championship. This is a rare mistake. What's 3 more teams?

[Basel A]

Originally Posted by Justin Montois

I might be alone here but I think after what happened it's only fair to let both alliances go to Championship. Yes, one alliance didn't win, but to be given something, and then taking it back just seems wrong. ~400 teams will go to Championship. This is a rare mistake. What's 3 more teams?

It's unfair to the other 4 alliances around the country that lost a finals match by 2 or fewer points, including 2 that would have won the event if they had won that match.

[Justin Montois]

Originally Posted by Basel A

It's unfair to the other 4 alliances around the country that lost a finals match by 2 or fewer points, including 2 that would have won the event if they had won that match.

There are 4 alliances in FIRST that were declared winners of an event but due to a field crew mistake their win and ticket to Championship was taken away?

EDIT: 1,000th Post

[Basel A]

Originally Posted by Justin Montois

There are 4 alliances in FIRST that were declared winners of an event but due to a field crew mistake their win and ticket to Championship was taken away?

EDIT: 1,000th Post

I mean that the same mistake could've been made and missed at any of those events.

[Justin Montois]

Originally Posted by Basel A

I mean that the same mistake could've been made and missed at any of those events.

Yeah absolutely. But since it was made at this event, I feel "Doing the right thing" would have been to allow the losing alliance to go on to Championship.

[Tristan Lall]

Originally Posted by Justin Montois

There are 4 alliances in FIRST that were declared winners of an event but due to a field crew mistake their win and ticket to Championship was taken away?

I think the officials caught it at an appropriate time, and handled it well. It was only a matter of minutes, and the level of certainty about the error was high. Once the error was realized, the choice was between deciding the winner on the basis of a human error, or deciding the winner on the basis of a completely legitimate match.

Given the circumstances, they rightly chose change the call and decide the winner based on gameplay.

(If they'd discovered it too late—like as the field was being packed up, after the awards—then it might be a different story.)

[yarden.saa]

The same mistake happened in Israel, they had to go back to quarter finals after the semi finals started..
Something should be changed with the tie breaker system if the field crew are doing the same mistake...

[pfreivald]

While I'm okay with the resolution, I agree with Justin that allowing the losing alliance to go to Championship would have been the best possible call.

[PayneTrain]

Originally Posted by Justin Montois

I might be alone here but I think after what happened it's only fair to let both alliances go to Championship. Yes, one alliance didn't win, but to be given something, and then taking it back just seems wrong. ~400 teams will go to Championship. This is a rare mistake. What's 3 more teams?

I was looking for this happy ending to this story and was disappointed this ruling was not made. It's not like this is the first time important matches have been botched due to errors on the field.

[Kevin Sevcik]

Originally Posted by PayneTrain

I was looking for this happy ending to this story and was disappointed this ruling was not made. It's not like this is the first time important matches have been botched due to errors on the field.

Einstein 2012 is completely different. That was due to problems WITH the field, interference from outside the field, and programming and wiring problems with some robots. Which added up to subpar performance from many robots. the implication being that if it weren't for the problems, the matches would have played differently and there might be a different winner.

In this case, the scoring error occurred after the match was played. The Red Alliance clearly won the match, but a scoring error gave the win to the other team. It's entirely clear who the correct winner of the tournament was. And hey, look! After the error was corrected, the Red Alliance was the winner.

For the record, I'm also against the "Everybody wins" solution. I understand the argument that the Blue Alliance was hurt and disappointed to discover that they didn't win after all, I just don't think it's valid. It's only slightly different from the more common scenario where they Blue Alliance thinks they've scored enough points to pull off the win, only to lose by 2 points because something. The only difference is a few more minutes of the Blue Alliance thinking it's won. Are you people really arguing that we should give people passes to Champs because they're disappointed and totally thought they should have won the competition?

[Kpchem]

Originally Posted by Kevin Sevcik

It's only slightly different from the more common scenario where they Blue Alliance thinks they've scored enough points to pull off the win, only to lose by 2 points because something. The only difference is a few more minutes of the Blue Alliance thinking it's won. Are you people really arguing that we should give people passes to Champs because they're disappointed and totally thought they should have won the competition?

Full disclosure: I am an alumnus of one teams involved, FRC 360. My opinion is my own, and in no way associated with my former team. I watched the webcast on Saturday and saw only what was shown there. Finally, I understand that as someone with an association with these teams I cannot be totally unbiased in this situation.

I believe the point being made here is not that the blue alliance "thought they had scored enough points" or thought that they should have won. It was the fact that it was announced to everyone in attendance that the blue alliance had won the regional, and the correction to the score did not come until 15 minutes later. While some alliances may think that they'd won a match, and therefore the regional, this was not just an assumption the teams had made - they were told that they had won. I believe that is why people are arguing that the alliance should be given a pass to Championship, because they were officially told that they had earned one and later had it taken away.

I also want to echo Frank in saying thank you to the volunteers at this event for coming forward and revealing what happened. I know how hard it must have been given the circumstances, but it was definitely the right thing to do. Thank you, and I hope that you continue to work with FIRST in the future.

Please know that I am not trying to argue in favor of anything, given my association with the situation. I just wanted to attempt to clarify what is being said in this thread.

[Kevin Sevcik]

Originally Posted by Kpchem

Full disclosure: I am an alumnus of one teams involved, FRC 360. My opinion is my own, and in no way associated with my former team. I watched the webcast on Saturday and saw only what was shown there. Finally, I understand that as someone with an association with these teams I cannot be totally unbiased in this situation.

I believe the point being made here is not that the blue alliance "thought they had scored enough points" or thought that they should have won. It was the fact that it was announced to everyone in attendance that the blue alliance had won the regional, and the correction to the score did not come until 15 minutes later. While some alliances may think that they'd won a match, and therefore the regional, this was not just an assumption the teams had made - they were told that they had won. I believe that is why people are arguing that the alliance should be given a pass to Championship, because they were officially told that they had earned one and later had it taken away.

I also want to echo Frank in saying thank you to the volunteers at this event for coming forward and revealing what happened. I know how hard it must have been given the circumstances, but it was definitely the right thing to do. Thank you, and I hope that you continue to work with FIRST in the future.

Please know that I am not trying to argue in favor of anything, given my association with the situation. I just wanted to attempt to clarify what is being said in this thread.

I understand the argument, I just think we're talking about a difference in degree more than in type. There have been a large number of teams who have felt similar to the Blue Alliance did here, it's just that the Blue Alliance had it worse because they thought they'd won for 15 minutes instead of 2-3. Basically, I'm disagreeing that officially announcing it makes this a completely different situation that requires a completely different response. I really do feel very bad that the teams on both alliances had to go through this, but it's not as if awards had been handed out and travel plans had been made already. It's not like their robots were handicapped by field problems and couldn't perform to spec. The only reason for qualifying those teams for Champs in this case is that we feel really bad about how disappointed and upset those teams are. Which, it seems to me, opens up a lot of other circumstances for giving teams free passes to Champs.

[Navid Shafa]

Originally Posted by Kpchem

While some alliances may think that they'd won a match, and therefore the regional, this was not just an assumption the teams had made - they were told that they had won. I believe that is why people are arguing that the alliance should be given a pass to Championship, because they were officially told that they had earned one and later had it taken away.

This is the most valid argument for sending them to champs. No one who watched them play will argue that they are of less caliber than teams who are already going to champs or may be sitting on the wait-list either.

[Dave McLaughlin]

Originally Posted by Navid Shafa

This is the most valid argument for sending them to champs. No one who watched them play will argue that they are of less caliber than teams who are already going to champs or may be sitting on the wait-list either.

Aside from the fact that in this case 3 teams who had not in fact won championship bids would recieve them. Imagine if the mc at central had come out and said that a disc had been missed and the correct score was in favor of the red alliance but the ruling of a blue alliance victory was not going to be over turned. Should the red alliance then be given bids as well because they were told they had in fact won the match but would not be credited the win? How would the blue alliance feel knowing that their victory was false and empty?

In my opinion it is just a shame that it ended this way, and giving bids to the blue alliance would set a dangerous prescendent.

[EricH]

Giving bids to the finalist alliance due to things that happen at a competition event is not unprecedented. However, giving bids to the finalist alliance in this situation would set a dangerous precedent.

The most recent of these* was due to a verified bad call. SVR 08, F3 as I recall, the Head Ref ruled that a trackball on the overpass being contacted by an opponent was not scored (actually, opponent contact had no effect on scored or not scored that year by that method). But, instead of changing the score, and sending the match the other way (the direct effect of correcting the score), which is what could have been done, half an hour after the finals were over there was a replay. The "opponent" previously mentioned won the replay, "confirming" them as the winners. HQ stepped in within a week and said, in effect, "These teams should have won, our ref made a mistake, all teams in the eliminations get bids".

Central Washington 2013 is what SHOULD have happened in SVR 2008. (I wonder if the refs had that in the back of their minds?) I think the situation where a referee or scorer misses a call, or makes a bad one, then admits to and corrects it does not warrant extra bids being handed out--after all, they did admit that they screwed up, and they did correct the error, even if it was a bit later than teams would like. If, however, the mistake is not admitted to and/or corrected, and it is later discovered, then there is already precedent for giving the finalist alliance bids, in that case and that case only.

*I'm not including Einstein 2012 and its field issues; the only other one I can think of was Arizona 2004, which is not the same situation at all.