301 points! and could have done more

[bduddy]

Originally Posted by Andy A.

Why wouldn't it be?

I did exactly that in 2002 in front of Woodie Flowers (he was literally standing right by me as I called the other alliance drive coaches over to discuss the match). He seemed to think it was funny.

Qualification points were a little weirder back then- if you lost you got your score or, if you won, three times the losers score. So it was beneficial to make sure you won but also to make sure the other alliances scores were high. It lead to all kinds of funny stuff; teams scoring for their opponents and, in a few cases, 'fixing' the match. In our case both alliances came out of the match with higher rankings than if we had played a 'normal' match.

At the time it caused a little controversy but people pretty quickly figured out it was just the smart play in some cases and, not surprisingly, FIRST didn't disagree.

That's a different scenario, in that the qualification system back then made it that certain strategies could be advantageous towards both alliances. In eliminations, there are only wins and losses, so there is no valid reason to do anything like that.

Also, for the last couple years FIRST has eliminated such qualification systems, for the most part...