ChampionSplit: A Historical Perspective

[Citrus Dad]

First, I commend Alex2614 for an excellent set of arguments for Championsplit. I'm not going to try to quote all of his points, but I am going to address a couple of central core premises.

The two premises that I am contending are 1) that FRC can continue to inspire with a more generalized participation concept rather than a competitive excellence model, and 2) that sponsors don't care about competitive scale and success.

On the competitive excellence, I've seen several great posts about the importance of competition in the FRC model. It's been alluded to, but I think the most important unique aspect of FRC is the competitive sports model. If FIRST had chosen a different approach, it would be veering into any number of other school science programs. We don't need more of those. Keeping our eye on what makes FIRST unique is most important. And at the core of that unique mission is competitive excellence. Diluting that competitive excellence too much dilutes our uniqueness. (And I've proposed several solutions that try to limit the dilution.)

I agree with Alex2614 that FIRST needs to expand the availability of Champs to more teams, but others have made the point that teams really turn over much more often than you might be aware. I think there's perhaps two dozen perennial powerhouses, and the other 376 to 576 teams move up and down the ranks and even churn in and out of Champs. Look at our alliance--only one team 118 had even been to Champs before 2011 (other than 1671 making it as a rookie in 2005). I don't see a problem going to 800 teams so long as the two events are well structured. The real issue is "why do the two events need to be co-equals?" If we have two levels of championships, and as Alex2614 asserts that competing for the single championship isn't important to his team, why is it important that the event his team attends have a championship that is equal to the other one? Why can't one of them have a different qualification system that brings together that year's top teams if we have as much turnover as we seem to have? Why not maintain FIRST's focus on competitive excellence which is it's core uniqueness?

And I will tell you from personal experience that making a selective Championship and winning a single World Championship does make a difference to our sponsors. We are in the midst of a whirlwind of press and community outreach efforts that did NOT happen last year or the year before when we won our divisions and played on Einstein. We are going to recognized by the State Senate and a meeting with state senator that wouldn't happen if we had won part of a multiple championship. The public understands "World" champion and sponsors want that cache. You're lying to your sponsors if you claim to be "world" champion after winning a championsplit event. That could badly damage everyone's credibility. I'm pretty sure that our largest sponsor, UCD, would be less interested in funding our competition fees if we weren't chasing a true world championship. They now have prestige that other universities can't dismiss. And we hope it makes other colleges and universities more motivated to catch up by sponsoring other teams. We have an opportunity to transform our success into a bigger statewide impact that "Southwest" champion will never carry.

Yes, only a few teams can expect to win Champs, but trying to attain it inspires many teams. The powerhouses have a credible chance each year, and their efforts inspire other teams. Trying to catch 254 (and we don't think for a moment we're there yet) is our local inspiration. 3824 might be your local inspiration. And in turn, we know that we inspire other regional teams, and given your success as evidenced by making the Hopper finals you do the same. And I know 254 is inspired by their very friendly rivalry with 1114--they traveled to Waterloo last year to compete against the best of the best. We have to keep in mind what motivates the very best teams if we want to keep the chain of inspiration going, which as EricH has pointed out needs recognition.

I'd like to see more of a rationale that having two, or multiple, coequal champs is key to driving inspiration rather than having two, or multiple, tiered championships. What I've seen so far is "FIRST HQ has made a choice to change the status quo dramatically, and we're OK with that because it might work." That's not a very inspiring argument. What is the proactive argument multiple coequal champions is key to inspiration?

Which brings me to rebutting Taylor's point:

Originally Posted by Taylor

FRC is said to have been designed after the sporting model, and that is true. Sports are highly celebrated in our culture, and if you can't beat 'em, join em.

I have, however, seen this tradition with golf, horse racing, tennis, boxing, auto racing, marathons, swimming. With these sports, each event stands on its own; there are a series of large events that have a lot of prestige throughout the year but are roughly equal in weight. Racing has the Triple Crown; golf and tennis with the Grand Slam.

Yes, I understand that athletes may participate in multiple grand events, and that doesn't necessarily translate to FRC. This is where I, like Richard McCann, am reminded of the CFB Bowl Series.

Oh yeah - that paradigm has become obsolete. But it worked for a while, and only got replaced 140 years after the game was invented. We haven't even hit a quarter century yet.

The fact is that a single event in each of the listed sports is considered supreme, and the other events reside just below them. Ask any athlete which they would prefer winning. In some cases, the supreme event happens only once every 4 years, which works for career athletes but not high schools students, but the principle is the same:

gold: Masters
horse racing: Kentucky Derby
tennis: Wimbeldon
auto racing (type matters): Indianapolis, Daytona
swimming: Olympics
marathons: (this is my sport) - it's gotten very muddled which is actually hurting the sport. The Olympics has become diluted due to a lack of a monetary purse. So this is good counterexample of how to ruin a positive model through dilution. Note also that marathoners can run only 1 or 2 fast efforts a year, so it's completely different from any of the others.

There are NO coequals to these events. The associated events are series championships that key off that one supreme event.

As for college football, it moved to the BCS format because it was losing ground to other sports with the lack of a single championship. Why not learn their lesson now rather than waiting 140 years?

Originally Posted by magnets

FIRST was about a culture change, where STEM competitions are really exciting and popular. Sadly, it didn't really happen. The ESPN broadcasts were the closest we ever got, and over ten years later, we still haven't made too much more progress with television coverage. Have we given up trying to change the culture, and instead decided to try to give lots of kids a fun weekend?

I think a big part of FIRST's problem here is that it really hasn't grasped the difference in retail and business to business marketing. I posted in the Championship Survey thread about the problems with presentation. If groups of high school students can put on better webcasts, that means that FIRST should bring in real professionals to put together a top line package. When they do that, then ESPN or someone else will get a lot more interested. Right now grainy choppy images aren't a great selling point.

Which brings us to keeping our eye on the prize. Backing away from reengineering our culture is giving up. Trying to reach that goal is even more important to keeping the energy behind FIRST than competitive excellence.