Proposal for Wildcard Reform

[Jon Stratis]

Originally Posted by Paul Richardson

Currently the wildcard system rewards playing late regionals over early regionals. "Burned" wildcards could be reallocated to alleviate this.

If a team generates a wildcard that goes unused, retroactively create a wildcard at the earliest event where that team qualified for Championship and generated the least wildcards.

Spoiler for Hypothetical Scenarios:

Hypothetical Team A

Event 1: Regional Winner
Event 2: Regional Winner (wildcard used immediately)
Event 3: Regional Winner (wildcard unused)

A realistic scenario. Here the wildcard from Event 3 goes to Event 1, because Team A generated the least wildcards at Event 1.

Hypothetical Pre-qualified Team B

Event 1: Regional Winner and Regional Chairman's Award (2 wildcards used immediately)
Event 2: Regional Winner (wildcard unused)
Event 3: No awards
Event 4: Regional Winner (wildcard used immediately)
Event 5: Regional Winner (wildcard unused)

An unrealistic scenario for demonstration. Here the wildcard from Event 2 goes to Event 1, because Events 3-5 don't exist at that time. The wildcard from Event 5 goes to Event 4 because Event 4 has 1 wildcard from this team compared to 3 at Event 1. Event 2 also has only 1 wildcard, but is ignored because a wildcard already went unused at that event. Event 3 is ignored because Team B did not qualify there.

The problem with this comes down to expectations and bag and tag. A team leaving a week 1 regions that has no more events, may not bag their robot or prepare for champs in any way. Then, over a month later (here in MN it's likely a week 1/week 6 difference, with how out events are scheduled) we give them a "retroactive" wild card? Not only is their robot now illegal for having been unbagged all that time, they probably aren't prepared for it financially either. It just introduced a whole lot of uncertainty into the equation for teams.

The current system makes sure teams know what to expect when they leave their event. For regionals, you know if you earned a spot or not before you leave the venue. For districts, hopefully you'll have a good feel for your odds of making it to the district championship, although that can be a little up in the air (but you should know if it's definite, borderline, or no way). Teams on the waitlist know they are on the waitlist and are planning for the eventuality of getting selected.