Future First Championship News

[Kevin Sevcik]

Originally Posted by Qbot2640

This

In 2012 we got to championship by winning a regional, but so many teams get there by other means that it is easy for a first-time championship team to get overlooked and not taken seriously. I don't want to diminish anyone's experience, but when everybody wins, what is the significance of winning? It's starting to sound like rec league soccer...everyone sign up to bring a snack at one of the events, and when you get to championship...here's your trophy and here's your Capri Sun.

I'm also concerned by this attitude. Champs as the ultimate robot competition is depressing to me since to achieve this you need to:

1. Eliminate waitlists, and probably wildcards. They didn't win in so they shouldn't be there.
2. Eliminate advancing 2nd and 3rd picks. They're usually just along for the ride on the winning alliance.
3. Eliminate advancing chairman's, HoF, and EI robots. Their robot didn't get them there, so that would water down the competition.
4. Eliminate advancing RAS. Best rookie is still a rookie.
5. Eliminate advancing original and sustaining teams. Just cause you used to be good...

I mean, if we're serious about crowning the one true champion and all that.

[Boltman]

Originally Posted by Kevin Sevcik

I'm also concerned by this attitude. Champs as the ultimate robot competition is depressing to me since to achieve this you need to:

1. Eliminate waitlists, and probably wildcards. They didn't win in so they shouldn't be there.
2. Eliminate advancing 2nd and 3rd picks. They're usually just along for the ride on the winning alliance.
3. Eliminate advancing chairman's, HoF, and EI robots. Their robot didn't get them there, so that would water down the competition.
4. Eliminate advancing RAS. Best rookie is still a rookie.
5. Eliminate advancing original and sustaining teams. Just cause you used to be good...

I mean, if we're serious about crowning the one true champion and all that.

Do all that (in allowing those entries) and keep it in one city. It works. Two cities does not work... always a step-child competition. Is the world clamoring for 800 in champs?

[Kevin Sevcik]

Originally Posted by Boltman

Seriously what message does dual championships send? Unless accompanied by a significant entry fee reduction?

Makes no sense to have two locations for < 600 teams or an expansion to 1000 unless entry fee driven.

If it walks like a duck....

Right. So who are we proposing is inflating their salary and pocketing all that extra money? Unless you think they're funneling the extra money into FTC, FLL, etc. In which case why the outage?

[cgmv123]

Originally Posted by Kevin Sevcik

Unless you think they're funneling the extra money into FTC, FLL, etc.

FLL and FTC subsidize FRC (and will for the foreseeable future). FIRST's financials tell us that much.

[JaneYoung]

I've always thought of the Championship Event as a Championship event. It is possible to have 2 Championsip events - or more. Much of the chatter in this thread makes me think the mindset is that of a National event that wants to have the Worlds title. The bigger picture is of a much broader and wider scope; an inclusive one. Imagine a Championship Event in Israel, Great Britain, China, Mexico, Brazil... Imagine the Awards given to prestigious members and teams of the FIRST communities in these countries and others. Imagine these members and teams in 2020, 2025, 2030... Not in 2015 where we bicker about the locations of 2 host cities in the USA only.

Much of the basis of the HoF teams has been a foundation of growing FIRST and STEM initiatives in our communities, creating a far-reaching impact. This has happened and will continue to happen. To put blinders on and deny growth and a legitimate need for change that reflects this very real growth and interest, is nothing less than hypocritical.

Since when has FIRST ever accepted/maintained the status quo? Since when have teams, mentors, and our FIRST community leadership chosen to maintain the status quo? This is just the beginning, I think. And it is exciting.

Jane

[Kevin Sevcik]

My wife's suggestion for solving the problem of only ever seeing teams from your region at Champs is to let teams willing to travel sign up for a lotto to swap slots with a team at the other Champs. So you'd have a 50/50 chance at seeing a new set of teams that year. HQ probably wouldn't let teams just pick which Champs because of capacity and the risk of everyone picking Houston to make it the Premier event, but this would still allow for some inter regional mixing.

[the programmer]

I haven't read all 500 posts so I apologize if some of my ideas have already been said but to me, FIRST has a few options:

First, they could stick exactly to their current plan. To me, this is the worst option as now you'll only interact with half the teams in the world and instead of qualifying for a true championship, you basically qualify for a bigger regional.

The second option is to have the two championships but for them to culminate in a small event where one CCA winner is announced and one championship alliance is announced. This model would be scalable and the culminating event would be very spectator friendly, especially coupled with FTC and FLL. This still has the issue of region locking teams.

A third option would be for the first "CMP" to be similar to the NIT and the second to be like the NCAA tournament. This let's teams interact with other teams from all over the world but the NIT style event may not be the most inspiring.

A fourth option would be to have teams pick their CMP or have it randomly selected, this could culminate in a final event like in the second option.

I'm sure there are many other options but considering FIRST seems to be locked into these venues, these seem like the best options.

[Heretic121]

After reading about 10 pages I stopped.

I agree with a lot of Veterans who spoke in those first 10 pages and hope FIRST listens to those who have been around for 10+ years and have been the real backbone of this organization (ex. mentors, volunteers).

I'm going to give FIRST a pass with the hopes of a real explaination of what the reasons for this and not going the way of the Super Regional like planed when districts were announced, as well as a financial reason outside of "this is going to save teams money" shenanigans.

[Iaquinto.Joe]

FRC in Michigan is going to be so cool!

[asid61]

I dislike the idea as it lowers the number of awesome robots I can see at champs. I want a good look at 148 and 1114 while I'm there this year, and other bots in other years.
More district championships, followed by one big champs event would be my choice. To allow more teams to come, we could try moving it around the world, at least when more countries become involved.

[itsjustjon]

Originally Posted by Kevin Sevcik

I'm also concerned by this attitude. Champs as the ultimate robot competition is depressing to me since to achieve this you need to:

1. Eliminate waitlists, and probably wildcards. They didn't win in so they shouldn't be there.
2. Eliminate advancing 2nd and 3rd picks. They're usually just along for the ride on the winning alliance.
3. Eliminate advancing chairman's, HoF, and EI robots. Their robot didn't get them there, so that would water down the competition.
4. Eliminate advancing RAS. Best rookie is still a rookie.
5. Eliminate advancing original and sustaining teams. Just cause you used to be good...

I mean, if we're serious about crowning the one true champion and all that.

Eliminating all of those teams that got to Worlds by means of awards and such is shunning a lot of teams that do not necessarily deserve to be shut out of the experience. Doing so wouldn't fix much and your solution is way far right on the spectrum while having two Champs is on the far left. It definitely doesn't have to be all or nothing.

[Squillo]

I think most of the kids (probably all of them) on our "middle-of-the-road" team would be just as happy, excited and inspired to go to a "half-worlds" championship, get to play with and be inspired by half of the best teams in the world, as to go to a true "World Championship." I can see both sides of that part of the argument. If this new arrangement actually accomplished that for a majority of teams, it might have SOME merit. Though a "super-regional" on the west coast would do just as well in that regard.

It's just a shame that their attempt to "lower travel costs" does absolutely nothing for the teams on the whole west side of the mainland US, not to mention Hawaii, Mexico, Australia, China, Japan, and the other teams we play with over here. Nor for teams in Europe/Israel/etc.

When I started reading the post, I thought - "Wow! Geographical split! They're finally going to have a championship event on the west coast! (Because west coast/east coast, or something similar - Detroit/Las Vegas, maybe? - was so obvious...) But then I read on.... You can't tell me that they couldn't find any city in the whole west side of the continent that could host this event???

This makes things easier for the MI/Toronto/NE/MAR teams only, as far as I can tell. Someone should figure out exactly what percentage of all the teams are benefited in any way by this, and ARE they the teams that really NEED that help the most? Does this actually benefit teams that are NOT currently attending champs BECAUSE of the travel cost? I'd like to see some data on that. Where are the teams who qualify for champs but can't go because of cost - are they in Michigan or NY? Or in Washington State, China, and Israel? Or in Florida? Just curious. I know if we'd qualified any year between 2011 and this year, inclusive, we would most likely not have been able to go, due to cost.

[Jacob Bendicksen]

While my initial reaction was very similar to many of those expressed earlier in this thread, I think there's something that we're missing, and that we need to reserve judgement until we find out what it is. I'm not sure exactly what it is, but Dave Lavery's post has made me believe that we're not seeing the entire picture, and that the final result will be better.

The sky, contrary to popular belief, is not falling.

[madhav]

Originally Posted by Squillo

I'd like to see some data on that.

This might help. Posted wayyy back.

Originally Posted by Madison

For the sake of informing the discussion, the circles on this map represent a 750 mile radius drawn from each of the three cities. It's pretty clear that these areas encompass a majority of current FRC teams.

I chose 750 miles because that's the furthest I've ever driven without wanting to die. It's about a 12 hour drive.

[jman4747]

This is not that bad. I don't think north or south will be "easy" to win due to not playing "half" the world. Districts would feel a bit better but we realy don't loose anything when you think about it. It's ambiguously unsettling because it's new and I like the alternative more. And yea it's more of a bummer when your shop is 5min from the former worlds location and the south championship is now 10hrs away. Thats all there is to it.

If you quit because of this you missed the point and maybe you shouldn't have joined up in the first place? Sponsors and aren't pulling out. Apparently FIRSTs sponsors are very on board or they couldn't afford two championships! Mentors share knowledge and show kids what engineering is realy like. If you are a mentor would you realy abandon your current and future students because you can't be the undisputed champ?

Why we are here now and why you shouldn't quit after 2016 is the same reason you do FRC and not just VRC/FTC in spite of the cost. The big robots are still realy cool and the amout of technical knowlage that can be attained is unrivaled for a high school program. Couple that with more sportsmanship and as much teamwork as any other sport and you have the best thing I've ever seen. Watchability is a fuction of team performance and that will go up naturally as more teams spring up and the field gets denser in the north and south.

I'd rather see districts but whatever. Now put it back in Atlanta!