Unscheduled Team Update: 3-20-2014

[Jared Russell]

Originally Posted by Swan217

You're saying you can't play defense without ramming. That is LITERALLY like saying you can't play defense in hockey without leaving your feet, or boarding. Ramming with bumpers is like helmet-to-helmet contact in football - Yes, the helmets protect your head from damage, but only so much. This is like saying you can't play defense in soccer without bodychecking your opponents. It's completely un-gracious & un-professional.

The concern is that we don't have a precise understanding of what "inhibition", "high-speed", "aggressive", and "ramming" mean in an Aerial Assist context.

This isn't just trying to be pedantic. Many people have already witnessed completely contradictory and inconsistent rulings when it comes to physical contact this year. You have teams intentionally flipping other teams without penalty at one regional, and then you have teams getting called for Tech Fouls because an opponent's intake fell off when they hit the field barrier at another. (Even before this update).

And then you have all of the missed assists because refs are too busy entering scores, watching human players, and trying to get the defensive calls right.

Now you have all of the new gray areas being thrown into the mix. Yes, there are cases where "high-speed aggressive ramming" is clear as day. But there are plenty of other big collisions that occur naturally between teams acting in good faith, and you have normal defensive contact that results in damaged robots due to bad luck or poor construction. How will these be called?

The NHL has had rules against boarding for a long time, and there are still controversial calls and tweaks to the rule from time to time (there was a major one in 2011). But tens of thousands of NHL games called by a fairly small group of professional referees have established precedent for how the foul is generally called. We are halfway through the FRC season and have a much larger pool of volunteer referees...

[Swan217]

Originally Posted by Jared Russell

The concern is that we don't have a precise understanding of what "inhibition", "high-speed", "aggressive", and "ramming" mean in an Aerial Assist context.

This isn't just trying to be pedantic. Many people have already witnessed completely contradictory and inconsistent rulings when it comes to physical contact this year. You have teams intentionally flipping other teams without penalty at one regional, and then you have teams getting called for Tech Fouls because an opponent's intake fell off when they hit the field barrier at another. (Even before this update).

And then you have all of the missed assists because refs are too busy entering scores, watching human players, and trying to get the defensive calls right.

Now you have all of the new gray areas being thrown into the mix. Yes, there are cases where "high-speed aggressive ramming" is clear as day. But there are plenty of other big collisions that occur naturally between teams acting in good faith, and you have normal defensive contact that results in damaged robots due to bad luck or poor construction. How will these be called?

The NHL has had rules against boarding for a long time, and there are still controversial calls and tweaks to the rule from time to time (there was a major one in 2011). But tens of thousands of NHL games called by a fairly small group of professional referees have established precedent for how the foul is generally called. We are halfway through the FRC season and have a much larger pool of volunteer referees...

Understandable, and believe me, I know how overworked the refs are this year. Our field crew in Orlando was about one more replayed match away from a breakdown on Friday. I also know that referee inconsistency has become almost a given in FIRST, but the answer to that is obviously better designed games & better referee training.

But it's not like looking out for Ramming/aggressive play is an ADDITIONAL responsibility to what the referees are already looking out for - they're already looking at G27's. This is a clarification on what constitutes overaggressiveness, and more flexibility to the refs on the penalties handed out for G27.

And this amendment doesn't come out of thin air, it's clearly coming from the Head Ref call this week, with head refs being frustrated at not being able to stop the flow of drivers to their "?" box complaining about overaggressive defense (in addition to the missed assists & incorrect scores). I'm always pleased to see FIRST react to situations in the field & make changes instead of ignoring them. See my whitepaper for some more of my thoughts.