Yellow card / Red card usage at 2004 IRI

[Ricky Q.]

Originally Posted by JVN

Things are starting to get off topic.

So... How do you think the Red/Yellow card system worked?

Well John now that you bring it up, I think it worked well.

By issuing yellow cards the ref's were able to warn a team that got one "Hey you are going a little too far there, you don't want to do it again" and most of the time teams listened.

Yellow cards made drivers and coaches more aware of their robot and their actions on the field. Duing one of our strategy planning talks before he finals Team 980's coach said, "Remember we have a yellow card, don't do anything stupid", to their drivers and they were careful not to bring out that Red card.

My team was on the other side of 2 Red Card DQ's. Once in the quarterfinals where it was an obvious DQ situation (Hooked on and couldn't let go) and one where a previous yellow card had been issued and the action occured again, leading to a red card. In both of these cases, and all the other ones that I saw, the card system was used in the way that Andy explained it on Friday morning of IRI. Reasons for the card were explained, and the referees always conferred before issuing one.

There will always be some rules that aren't totally clear and are interpreted different by different people, it is just the way it is. All umpires don't call strikes the same way, all NFL Refs have a different defintion of penalties in their game. But they do have some guidelines to follow, as did Andy and the crew at IRI. They enforced the clear rules, and interpreted all the others to the best of their ability.

The card system test was an excellent idea for IRI.