ChampionSplit: A Historical Perspective

[Alex2614]

Originally Posted by iVanDuzer

Both teams that I have been a part of have knowingly and purposefully avoided using the 25% number. For one, it's a devaluation of the team's success (multiple Einstein berths, a regional win streak). For the other, what does it say about a team that can't make it to Worlds after five years when 25% of teams do it? Especially after saying time and time again that making it to Worlds is our goal?

There are definitely sponsors that are in it for STEM, and who "get" FIRST's message and believe in it. The problem is that any FIRST team worth their salt will find these sponsors relatively quickly (within the first few years). If these sponsors do not sufficiently cover the operating costs of the team, then you have to find sponsors who AREN'T super-gung-ho for STEM education. The first group of sponsors don't need convincing (sometimes because they're involved with FIRST already). The second group does.

And a great way to do that convincing is to chart accomplishments. Some teams tout Alumni Graduation rates in comparison to their peers. Others draw on on-field success. And different sponsors look for different things.

So no, I have never been told by a sponsor that they won't sponsor us because of the 25% number, because we never give them access to that number in the first place. On the flip side, you do have a very-outspoken example in this thread of a Championship team that has received buckets of attention (that they will probably turn into sponsorships) because they are the World Champion. And I can point out a couple other examples of that happening elsewhere as well.

Except they aren't "the" world champion. One of 4 champions. And in 2017 they'll be one of 8 champions (or 6 if we go back to 3-team alliances). And in terms of 3,000 teams, the difference between 4 and 8 is negligible. Just like when we went from one champion team to one champion alliance (increasing the number of champions 3-fold).

[BrennanB]

Originally Posted by Alex2614

Except they aren't "the" world champion. One of 4 champions. And in 2017 they'll be one of 8 champions (or 6 if we go back to 3-team alliances). And in terms of 3,000 teams, the difference between 4 and 8 is negligible. Just like when we went from one champion team to one champion alliance (increasing the number of champions 3-fold).

Except FIRST wants to bring both the two winning alliances together anyways, so this is a probable non-issue

[BrendanB]

Originally Posted by Alex2614

No, but I will tell them that 25% of teams make it to the "championship level." And our rookie year when close to 25% of teams went, nobody thought any less of it than they do now. It may not be one "event," but they're both the "championship level." It's still going to the championship. Just some teams go to one event and some to the other. It's still the highest you can get. And if winning one of those events is the absolute highest you can go in FIRST, what sponsor is going to say no to you because you got to the highest level there is?

The way FIRST is expanding the program in relationship to how many teams move along to the championships isn't inline with what we are used to in today's competitive culture. Something sponsors are more familiar and for the most part would agree with. The NFL, MLB, or NBA can keep adding in new teams but they will still work their way down to one winner. Qualifications (playoffs) might increase but they'll work their way down to a head to head match-up. They won't cut the Superbowl and leave it at the NFC and AFC Championships.

Is that in line with FIRST? Probably not which is where a lot of these debates are coming from because some people feel otherwise. People who enjoy spending a lot of money following their hometown team agree with it and these are often times the same people we are asking to support teams. If your lifelong sports team makes it to the Superbowl and you have the resources to spend lots of money on a ticket you will try to attend. Would you feel similarly in spending the same amount if it wasn't the Superbowl? For some people you'd still go since its the Championship but for some the magic would be lost.

Percentage wise 25% is consistent with what we have had in the past but even if you can sustain that you start diminishing what that level means. To a degree I'm somewhat envious of teams who win the highest awards at the FLL World Festival. The number teams involved and making it down to be the top team on the table or winning in the directors award is a huge accomplishment. Yet as it stands FLL is a broken system because many regions can't send a team every year which is sad.

[JimInNJ]

Originally Posted by BrendanB

Percentage wise 25% is consistent with what we have had in the past but even if you can sustain that you start diminishing what that level means. To a degree I'm somewhat envious of teams who win the highest awards at the FLL World Festival. The number teams involved and making it down to be the top team on the table or winning in the directors award is a huge accomplishment. Yet as it stands FLL is a broken system because many regions can't send a team every year which is sad.

At that percentage (25%) this year's FTC championship event would have involved 1120 teams. In 3 years, given the current growth rates, this number could top 2000 teams. I think that the current 128 team bracket is just right, as it keeps the top level competition sharp with only teams that have won regional and super regional events.

In the case of FLL, the 25% number would be closer to 7000 teams this year, and 11000 teams in 3 years. I don't even want to think about 110,000 FLL kids all in the same place!

I'm still having trouble understanding why FRC teams expect to send 20-25% of the entire league to the top level championship event. Please explain it to someone on the outside looking in.

[Gregor]

Originally Posted by JimInNJ

I'm still having trouble understanding why FRC teams expect to send 20-25% of the entire league to the top level championship event. Please explain it to someone on the outside looking in.

Quite a few FRC teams don't believe in this. It's a stated goal for FIRST HQ, but not of many FRC teams.

[gblake]

Originally Posted by gblake

Folks,

The title (and presumably the proper central topic) of this thread is "ChampionSplit: A Historical Perspective".

The title is not "Why I love/Hate the Championsplit Plan", or "Wild Speculation About the Future Behavior of Thousands of People, Based on Little More Than the Various Posters' Narrow/Individual Life Experiences".

Could we try to cleave a little more closely to the topic, please? Perhaps include some actual historical perspectives in our posts?

Blake
PS: Yes, the snark is on purpose. Much more is deserved (I probably deserve a little bit of it for my post made a few days ago), but attempting to preserve a shred of graciousness (and the approval of at least one of my Grandmothers) limited me to what I wrote.

The last N posts in this thread have done little to improve my understanding of the HISTORY of FIRST's championships. Know what I mean....?

[Siri]

Honest question: do high school sports teams that win say, the Mid-Atlantic Championship (or your geographic equivalent) bill themselves as "national quarterfinalists" or however many peer regions there are in the US for that sport? I've never seen anything like that, but I honestly don't know. This seems like a very bizarre debate if there's no precedent.

Originally Posted by JimInNJ

I'm still having trouble understanding why FRC teams expect to send 20-25% of the entire league to the top level championship event. Please explain it to someone on the outside looking in.

This is an excellent question, and one many of us have been asking for a long time. What HQ actually says is "we want more kids to feel the passion and power that comes with being a part of FIRST Championship events." (This is from the announcement and is echoed elsewhere.) Unfortunately, they've translated this as "every kid needs to get to CMP no matter how many kids there are", instead of "we should make more tiers of events more inspiring". This is unfortunate not because I'm against the split, but because it's foundationally less scalable than the alternative. It's also weird from a historical perspective, because while every team could theoretically get in every four years if they manage to maintain the 25% number forever, that means 3 poor teams out there are hoping that 254 misses Worlds 3 of every 4 years. I have trouble imagining what Worlds would really be like if HQ actually enforced the prospect of getting in every team every four years.

Does anyone have a way to generate numbers on how close we've gotten to that "goal" for the era in which the rate was around 25%? ...And Blake, I disagree. We're straying some (okay, occasionally a lot), but the general trend is towards comparing historical aspects of champs to the present and future. I don't see this as a particularly big jump from the thread OP or title, but you're welcome to bring up a topic of interest to you that's closer (or the same distance away).

[gblake]

Originally Posted by Siri

...And Blake, I disagree.

I'll stand by what I wrote. "The last N posts in this thread have done little to improve my understanding of the HISTORY of FIRST's championships."

Maybe the historical perspectives of other readers are being improved/changed. Mine isn't.

[IKE]

Originally Posted by gblake

The last N posts in this thread have done little to improve my understanding of the HISTORY of FIRST's championships. Know what I mean....?

Here is a little History:
Looking at this White paper: http://www.chiefdelphi.com/media/papers/3133

Since 2001, there have been a total of 1608 Elim/Playoff opportunities. There have been 569 unique teams that have participated in playoffs. This is only a little surprising, but it is basically around 10% of all the FRC teams to ever exist.

Of those 241 have only had 1 occurrence. This could be due to a newly formed Powerhouse, or it coould be a 1 and done from 2008. What it does mean is that means that 1367 of 1608 oppotunities have been covered by teams that have had multiple playoffs. This number of teams is (569-241)=328 teams. IE 328 teams cover 1367 of the playoof/Elim opportunities, or about 4 times on average.

The top 100 teams (top 100 according to number of plays in elims) comprise of 775 of 1608 spots. IE, there are 100 FRC teams that basically cover 50% of playoff/elims spots.

As I said before, I would be curious what the similar attendence numbers look like, but as far as being contenders to win worlds, 50% of the spots in contention since 2001 have been covered by about 100 teams*...

Division SF and Finals are even crazier numbers...

*Not saying this number should be larger/smaller/different, just wanting to educate the audience a bit... BTW this is basically your top 3%.
Top 1% (about 31 teams) comprises about 1/5 to 1/3 of each advancing position...

[Citrus Dad]

Originally Posted by BrennanB

Except FIRST wants to bring both the two winning alliances together anyways, so this is a probable non-issue

I'm not sure that will work out logistically. Given the events on the national and local academic calendars starting in early May and that many seniors are graduating by late May, I think the ability to bring together the actual winning alliances from the two events within the academic year are very limited if FIRST HQ is planning on holding a separate event. And post school year chances are even worse. FIRST has held its championship on what it has viewed as the last possible weekend of the school year. What will have changed?

FIRST HQ is more likely to offer up a championship event in a high school gym and when the teams can't make it, they'll say "Oh well. Must not have been important enough to those teams."

[Citrus Dad]

Originally Posted by iVanDuzer

On the flip side, you do have a very-outspoken example in this thread of a Championship team that has received buckets of attention (that they will probably turn into sponsorships) because they are the World Champion. And I can point out a couple other examples of that happening elsewhere as well.

One added point, we're not looking to turn it into sponsorship just for us--we're trying to figure out to turn it into $$$ for California teams, now.

[Citrus Dad]

Originally Posted by Infinity2718

Poor word choice on my part. I was just trying to say that going from one event to two events takes the 'wow' factor or 'cool' factor away from the championship

Aaaah. Agreed.

[Citrus Dad]

Originally Posted by Alex2614

When we go to two championships, getting to the top of one of the two championships is the highest you can possibly do in FIRST. You really think a sponsor is going to devalue you because you went to the absolute highest level possible?
Currently there are 4 champions. Now there will be 8. It is still a VERY small percentage of teams that make it to Einstein and win. No sponsor is going to devalue your championship win because there are 8 teams that win instead of 4. Our sponsors don't devalue our championship awards now that they are done on a divisional level instead of championship level. So we were finalists on our field this year. There were 32 teams that were finalists on their respective fields this year. Sponsors don't care about that, though. Similarly sponsors won't care if there are 4 winning teams or 8. It is still the absolute highest you can go. When we went to alliances, we went from having one world champion to 3 teams on a winning alliance. and then they added the fourth. The number of winning teams has increased by a factor of 4. The number of teams going to Einstein has increased dramatically, especially this year. Instead of 16, there were 32 teams on Einstein. Tell me if any of those teams' sponsors devalue that accomplishment.

As far as percentage of teams attending, you really think a sponsor is going to not sponsor you anymore because you made it to the top 25%? Championships used to feature 25% of teams and nobody devalued that. It won't happen now either.

As far as media publicity for the championship, FIRST is looking into hosting an event with the winning teams from the 2 championships to crown a champion. Won't tha be a lot easier to publicize and televise than 400 teams? It would be a lot easier to follow for people outside FIRST too. A "champion of the champions" event.

It's been proven that teams that attend champs are more successful at obtaining sponsors and support. Those sponsors would still sponsor them if they made it to one of the two championships. Why? Because it's the highest "event" in FIRST, just spread across multiple cities. Only 20% of teams get to go. Or better yet 10% of teams in the East get to go to the east championship. It's still just as marketable as before. Sponsors aren't going to care. They will care that you made it to a top tier, world level event that only 20% of teams in the world get to attend. That is still something very special. And our students are going to get just as much of an incredible experience out of it that they are now in St Louis or Atlanta.

I can only repeat what I've posted below. The reaction we've gotten this year is much stronger than the past 2 years when we were divisional champions.

But I think the bigger issue is what teams are striving to to do. Striving to be one of 8 champions just doesn't have the same panache as being THE champion. Even our biggest sponsor, a university, seems to respond to that difference in emphasis. UCD is now the No. 1 agricultural university in the world. I see it on billboards all over the region. I doubt they would do the same as "one of the top 8" agricultural universities.

[Citrus Dad]

Originally Posted by JimInNJ

I started my first FLL team 3 years ago, and let me say that FIRST doesn't HAVE TO try to expand FLL....

I think that you have missed the real reason for the "Championsplit". FIRST's prime constituancy isn't FRC, it's the companies that fund FRC, and FIRST in general. They love to come to the championships and point to the teams that they supported, and be able to say "My company invested well, look at the successful teams that we sponsor!" More FRC teams at championship, more happy sponsors that can point and smile! More happy sponsors, more sponsor investment. If all else fails, "FOLLOW THE MONEY!"

I think this is an interesting perspective outside of FRC. And it may reflect how FIRST HQ is not only out of touch with the FRC community but also FLL and FTC. I believe that FIRST HQ is top heavy with successful business-to-business CEOs who think that their knowledge translates to retail marketing.

And your last paragraph reflects that perspective--keep the sponsors happy without realizing that the sponsors really want happy participants. Someone else posted elsewhere that maybe FIRST HQ has gotten to wrapped up believing that putting on an extravagant Championship is what makes FIRST go.

[Mr. Van]

Originally Posted by IKE

Here is a little History:
The top 100 teams (top 100 according to number of plays in elims) comprise of 775 of 1608 spots. IE, there are 100 FRC teams that basically cover 50% of playoff/elims spots....

Division SF and Finals are even crazier numbers...

BTW this is basically your top 3%.
...

This is perhaps the most relevant piece of information in this thread.

Even if 25% of teams could go to the championship in a given year, it is simply untrue that every team would be able to go within a 4 year period.

As has been pointed out, the Championship is much more about the show (for sponsors, media, etc.) than anything else. It has seemed that more and more, FIRST is focused on this one event and "improved" it with concerts, flashy displays (and paper airplanes?) while regionals in general have had less and less of this show aspect. How many regionals have official "team socials" on Friday night anymore?

What about this: NO CHAMPIONSHIP. Take the money, prestige, college row, displays, etc. and spread it around to the regionals. Give the 85% of teams that don't go to the championship on a regular basis a better experience. Nearly 50% of teams (or something like that) don't go to more than one regional. I suppose that this is what district champs are supposed to be.

Instead of making goal that the championship "experience" be something that a kid on a team experiences once in high school, make the event (regional) experience one that is as good, but happens perhaps eight times.

- Mr. Van
Coach, Robodox