Proposal for the 2 Championship format

[Citrus Dad]

Originally Posted by AGPapa

I seriously doubt that even a significant fraction of teams go to champs with the intention to win it all. The second tier event(s) will still give teams a fun large-scale event to end their season.

I agree with this sentiment. Maybe the top third believe that they have any chance at winning the championship. Virtually none of the rookies and wait list teams believe that; the teams traveling on Chairman's and EI are focused on that award; and many third bots in Regional champs are enjoying that they simply qualified.

I ran in the NCAA championships. I never imagined that I would be competing for the win (there was a two-time Olympic silver medalist in my event who set the record for most NCAA titles.) I went to compete with the best athletes and to meet many of them while enjoying a great competition. But I also got much of that same experience from running in a couple of high level invitationals. The NCAAs was a season-long goal and season ending reward for me. I expect that's the case for most FRC teams.

And many NCAA basketball teams are very happy to play in the NIT. In fact two other tournaments have sprouted up to meet the demand from teams wanting post-season play. That's why I think that some form of a two-tiered championship will satisfy the desires of most FRC teams.

[ehochstein]

Originally Posted by Citrus Dad

the teams traveling on Chairman's and EI are focused on that award; and many third bots in Regional champs are enjoying that they simply qualified.

2826, 2512 and 987 qualified for championships by winning the Chairman's Award.

4265 qualified for championships by winning the Engineering Inspiration.

2826 and 987 also won a Regional Event.

Would you say these teams focused on Chairman's/EI and not the robot game?

[Lil' Lavery]

Originally Posted by Citrus Dad

I agree with this sentiment. Maybe the top third believe that they have any chance at winning the championship. Virtually none of the rookies and wait list teams believe that; the teams traveling on Chairman's and EI are focused on that award; and many third bots in Regional champs are enjoying that they simply qualified.

I don't have the time or energy to type up my full thoughts on this thread yet, but I want to briefly respond to this.
Team 1671 2015- Qualified via RCA
Team 5012 2015- Qualified via win as "3rd robot"
Team 1241 2013- Qualified via Engineering Inspiration
Team 973 2011- Qualified via waitlist
Team 177 2010- Qualified via waitlist

[Chris Hibner]

Originally Posted by Citrus Dad

I agree with this sentiment. Maybe the top third believe that they have any chance at winning the championship.

I'm going to pile-on with Sean...

I don't agree with this. Given the serpentine draft, four robot alliances, AND the proliferation of cheesecake (I hate that term, BTW), anything can happen. I don't see why the vast majority of teams there wouldn't believe that there's some possibility.

I agree that the vast majority of teams don't go there expecting to win, but most teams should say "hey, anything can happen."

Originally Posted by Lil' Lavery

I don't have the time or energy to type up my full thoughts on this thread yet, but I want to briefly respond to this.
Team 1671 2015- Qualified via RCA
Team 5012 2015- Qualified via win as "3rd robot"
Team 1241 2013- Qualified via Engineering Inspiration
Team 973 2011- Qualified via waitlist
Team 177 2010- Qualified via waitlist

Nobody is saying that one has to win an event to be a competitive team, but that you are more likely to get competitive teams by looking at event winners. Yes, there are outliers as you've mentioned here, all of which are very capable and deserving robots for the championship level that qualified by means other than winning an event, but they are exceptions to the rule, not examples.

[IKE]

I would prefer the two to be stand-alone events that are full "regional" championships.
I would like to see FIRST then do a head to head championship from the two regionals at some other date/time/location. This is not so much to indentify the one true champion, but to turn that into a TV special. The quality of those 2 alliances should be quite high, and worthy of Television. Having it as a seperate event could allow for a higher production level (in terms of TV) type event. The proram could have some highlights from the two other championships, and then lead into matches for these two alliances.

If FIRST really wants to be known and change/influence culture, having a good TV special would go a long way.

[scottandme]

Originally Posted by Lil' Lavery

I don't have the time or energy to type up my full thoughts on this thread yet, but I want to briefly respond to this.
Team 1671 2015- Qualified via RCA
Team 5012 2015- Qualified via win as "3rd robot"
Team 1241 2013- Qualified via Engineering Inspiration
Team 973 2011- Qualified via waitlist
Team 177 2010- Qualified via waitlist

That's an argument for the district model. CA and ON are notoriously hard to qualify from, since you have to play through some of the best in FRC.

2015 is aberrant due to cheesecake. As far as I can see (1) robot who was a "3rd robot" qualifier made elims (out of 128) in 2014.

[Steven Donow]

Originally Posted by scottandme

That's an argument for the district model. CA and ON are notoriously hard to qualify from, since you have to play through some of the best in FRC.

2015 is aberrant due to cheesecake. As far as I can see (1) robot who was a "3rd robot" qualifier made elims (out of 128) in 2014.

Can't that trend also be related (perhaps insignificantly) to the switch to 8 divisions? ~42% of teams in a division being in elims in 2015 vs. 32% being in elims in 2014

[scottandme]

Originally Posted by Steven Donow

Can't that trend also be related (perhaps insignificantly) to the switch to 8 divisions? ~42% of teams in a division being in elims in 2015 vs. 32% being in elims in 2014

For sure - the %'s are probably less informative than the total number of teams "participating" in elims.

2013: 96
2014: 128
2015: 256

While 100 team fields are less than ideal, splitting to 8 fields caused a noticeable decline in the depth and overall competitiveness of each field.

[IKE]

Originally Posted by scottandme

For sure - the %'s are probably less informative than the total number of teams "participating" in elims.

2013: 96
2014: 128
2015: 256

While 100 team fields are less than ideal, splitting to 8 fields caused a noticeable decline in the depth and overall competitiveness of each field.

How so? I have heard others say this, but I don't find any actual evidence of such.
Many predicted "stand outs" didn't make it to the finals of their divisions, and there really did not seem like a lack of scoring capability capping scores. Lots of #1 alliances didn't win their division, which means that there was enough depth to form competitive alliances.
I don't think the mix would have dramatically changed 2014 either.

[AdamHeard]

Originally Posted by Lil' Lavery

I don't have the time or energy to type up my full thoughts on this thread yet, but I want to briefly respond to this.
Team 1671 2015- Qualified via RCA
Team 5012 2015- Qualified via win as "3rd robot"
Team 1241 2013- Qualified via Engineering Inspiration
Team 973 2011- Qualified via waitlist
Team 177 2010- Qualified via waitlist

All of these teams would've qualified on merit under the district system. The regional model does a poor job of sending the best teams.

[PayneTrain]

Originally Posted by AdamHeard

All of these teams would've qualified on merit under the district system. The regional model does a poor job of sending the best teams.

This. With the floodgates opening on the waitlist but some bigger areas stuck in the old model, maybe FIRST should normalize regional participation into the district points system? You're requiring teams attend two events to qualify via this method and spend $9k in reg fees, but everyone in the district model already does that.

[RufusBarbarossa]

Originally Posted by ehochstein

2826, 2512 and 987 qualified for championships by winning the Chairman's Award.

4265 qualified for championships by winning the Engineering Inspiration.

2826 and 987 also won a Regional Event.

Would you say these teams focused on Chairman's/EI and not the robot game?

Clearly teams like 2826 and 987, as well as my own team (2614) which win RCA AND Win an event are focused on both Chairman's/EI AND the robot game

Being good friends with many people from 4265, I know that they acknowledged that their robot was not one of the best and did not expect to be picked before 4th pick. Further, they were cheesecaked extensively by 2826 to include a can grabber, and likely would not have been picked otherwise. Basically what I'm saying is that although during build season they focused on the robot game, but acknowledged their robot's inferiority at CMP, and so focused mostly on EI while there (I also know they were very saddened when they didn't win EI)

I don't know much about 2512, so I can't say anything about them other than possibly cheesecake

It's interesting to note that all of the finalists playing on the field on Hopper were Chairman's award winners. Neat factoid most people probably don't know

[PAR_WIG1350]

Originally Posted by Citrus Dad

After reading the discussion here, I am proposing System D. I am hearing that a number of teams that might be in the second 400 qualifiers to Champs want the opportunity to be at the same venue as the very top teams. On the other hand, I think it's very important to have a unified championship decided at a single venue where there are a large number of spectators. Particularly if FRC ever wants to get to TV that is an absolute necessity.

System D starts with general qualifying using A (status quo) or B (district points) to create a pool of 800 teams. Then a modified version of district points is used to select the first hundred and the second hundred teams. The first hundred are assigned to the First Century champs; the second hundred to the Second Century Champs. The remaining 300 teams are then assigned on geographic basis per FIRST's proposal. The site of each champ alternates each year. This way the 300 geographically assigned teams get to play with the very top teams every other year, and they still play with a set of very high quality teams the other year.

I feel like this might be a workable compromise. If you look at it as a method of implementing region switching, then it isn't too far from FIRST's current plan.

[scottandme]

Originally Posted by IKE

How so? I have heard others say this, but I don't find any actual evidence of such.
Many predicted "stand outs" didn't make it to the finals of their divisions, and there really did not seem like a lack of scoring capability capping scores. Lots of #1 alliances didn't win their division, which means that there was enough depth to form competitive alliances.
I don't think the mix would have dramatically changed 2014 either.

Cut the depth of each field in half. Field winners were the 1,2,4,1,2,1,1,2 seeds. 2014 had 1,1,5,5. 2013 we had 1,2,3,5. Fields were significantly less deep across the board - and your shot at winning Einstein was dependent on which field you ended up on. No offense to any of the teams on Curie, but nobody was even close to 1114+148. They had ~20 point cushions on the rest of the division through quals, QF's, SF's, and F's. That's partially attributable to the game dynamic, but Einstein turned into a less deep version of division finals.

Elim scores weren't bad, but that's mainly due to the fact that 3rd robots didn't have much of a role on strong alliances (failure of game design), and a few were picked purely for "cheesecakeability".

3467 was our "4th robot" in 2014 (29 of 32 picked), but they were a 2x District Winner and a 1st round selection at NE DCMP. Most "3rd robots" didn't have those qualifications this year.

2012 I watched 1114,2056,4334 topple 67,2826,4143
2013 I watched 33,469,1519 beat 987,2415,2959 (after having to go through 254,2468,11)
2014 our alliance (2590,1625,1477,3467) squeezed past the MSC champs (33 & 27, along with 175,334)

I didn't see anything comparable to that this year - to some extent it was shifted up to Einstein, but I didn't see those deep, skilled "IRI-lite" alliances this year. 1671 being the notable exception, not sure how they slipped that far.