Curie Semifinal 1 - 3, what happened?

[Liz Smith]

Originally Posted by Joel J.

Are you saying the refs are well qualified, and thus their rulings are just.. or are you raising a question as to what it takes for a ref to be well-qualified, given that there were a consistent (ly high) number of bad rulings across the divisions?

How many mistakes before THE question can be raised?

Honestly, these referees especially at the Championship are not just people they find last minute roaming th Georgia Dome. I consider myself pretty active within FIRST, and in the referee meeting Thursday afternoon I pretty much felt out of place without a 5 or 10 year volunteer pin on my shirt. As stated before, there were at least 11 regional head referees on the floor of the Dome distributed on each of the fields. The referees watch and analyze every single match of each event they attend. With a lot of the referees at the championship officiating at more than regional, by the time they get to the Georgia Dome, I think it makes them pretty well qualified. I think a lot of people are thinking of the referees in the wrong light. They make up part of the FIRST community just as the students, and the mentors and everyone else does.

[Corey Balint]

The thing about saying there were 11 Head Refs on the floor of the Georgia dome is basically a moot point. Saying they head-reffed means very little to me. There were numerous regionals that were complained about this year for poor reffing, changing the rules, etc.

[IndySam]

Originally Posted by Joel J.

Are you saying the refs are well qualified, and thus their rulings are just.. or are you raising a question as to what it takes for a ref to be well-qualified, given that there were a consistent (ly high) number of bad rulings across the divisions?
How many mistakes before THE question can be raised?

I take great exception to this statement. I don’t recall any controversial rulings on Archimedes.


Refs are human, they will make mistakes. Highly paid professional sport refs make mistakes. It’s part of the game.

We can’t even come to a consensus on whether or not a team should be penalized for rough play in this thread and we have the benefit of being to watch the video, how are the refs on the field supposed to decide?


I think it’s time to lock up this one.

[Corey Balint]

Originally Posted by IndySam

I take great exception to this statement. I don’t recall any controversial rulings on Archimedes.

Controversial Ruling: The Refs declaring a member of an alliance was not broken, when they should have no say in the matter.

[David Brinza]

Originally Posted by Pat A.

While I won't second guess the referee rulings, my greatest dissatisfaction throughout the competition and with this match was with how difficult it was to know why/how points (particularly penalty or bonus points) were or were not given. Following the Semifinal 1-3 match other spectators told me that 1114/469/1523 received a 10 point penalty for leaving robot parts on the field (1114's arm). Imagine the outrage this created.

In the future, greater information being shared by the Refs/announcer re: final scores for all matches would be extremely helpful.

The original score posted was 40-10. A 10-point penalty was later assessed to the red alliance for pinning, final score: 30-10. No penalty was assessed to the blue alliance.

Everyone would like a more complete explanation of penalties and rulings regarding scoring. Keep in mind that FIRST is under considerable time pressure to get the matches completed. The championship event this year ran more than a hour past the scheduled time.

[Nawaid Ladak]

How to solve this refereeing issue.....

1. KEEP ALL THE CAMERA'S ACTIVE, all the camera's NASA and FIRST use must be kept recorded, therefore, something like this can be replayed to the referees and/or the crowd via the big screen. This will allow the referees a replay of the match from a different angle

2. OPT FOR CAMERAS ON ROBOTS, give teams the option to add cameras to their robot (1523 did this at the Florida Regional in 2005 and it looked pretty cool). give the referees and the FIRST community full access to these cameras, this will ensure that there is no ramming ABOVE the bumper zone

3. HIRE THE REFEREE'S, get someone who is not familiar to the game, who won't play favorites, who has refereed something else before like football or basketball. (basketball being the better, due to the active amount of game play.) therefore the refs are eliminated from the blame, if the refs are paid it will only bump registration up a maximum amount of say $100, that $100 from each team = $4000 per referee team consisting of 8 refs, 4 refs at the corners, a head ref, a clock operator, a red alliance ref, and a blue alliance ref. Now the referees will not be afraid of throwing out the yellow card or red card

4. CREATE A CHALLENGE SYSTEM, allow teams a form to challenge the refs, like in football, with the things stated above, this would be a affordable way to make sure problems like what happened last Saturday won't happen again, remember, 1114 had to complain to get that 10 point penalty. but a system needs to be set up, ie: teams can challenge to get a penelty but not for removing one, an item on the feild, like a removed ringer etc.

__________ Other Items

karthik, thanks for updating us on the situation, I would still love to hear from someone on the field from Team 48 though, i think that would give a lot of us the answers that we want.


Saying that 1114 are the good guys and 48 are the bad guys is a ridiculous statement. Some of us watch sports, lets say Peyton Manning is playing in the Super bowl and Brian Urlacker takes out Peyton's knees while tackling him as he is throwing the ball downfallen to a wide open Marvin Harrison, note, the game is in Overtime. Are you making a game saving tackle, or taking out a talented player from ever playing to his former level???

[Jason Morrella]

Originally Posted by IndySam

I take great exception to this statement. I don’t recall any controversial rulings on Archimedes.

I was not on the other fields to see the lack of rule enforcement others have talked about, but I was on Archimedes, and it was just as stunning.

In the semi finals one robot used it's arm to hit/push another robot up high, on it's side, above/out of the bumper zone and tip them over. The robot that tipped the other was not holding a tube, was not attempting to get one, and was not interacting with the rack - there was only one possible reason for the manuever they used and only one possible result, which happened. It was such an obvious DQ, that most around the field watched the rest of the match not really into the last 1:30 because they knew the match was going to have a DQ for the tip. To the shock of most everyone, no DQ was called and it determined who went to the finals.

The DQ called on Einstein for tipping was nowhere near as obvious or intentional as the non call on Archimedes. It's one thing not to call an obvious DQ, but an entirely different thing to then call a DQ for something not nearly as flagrant.

One thing to point out - a "no call" on an obvious rule violation and DQ has just as much impact on the outcome of a match as calling a penalty or a DQ - just that the alliance who didn't violate any rules is the one punished instead of a the other way around.

And as the previous post mentioned, if an alliance had a robot whose ramps had a problem and weren't working correctly and wanted to bring in the next highest seeded robot, as the rules state, and a referee doesn't allow it - then that is another instance where the refs were not following the rule book and were determining the outcome of the event. Very unfortunate. Also unfortunate for the next highest ranked team in Archimedes who should have been allowed to experience and play in the playoffs, but did not get to because a referee didn't follow the rules and ovestepped their role/responsibility.

So yes, the outcomes of matches on the Archimedes field were changed and impacted by refs not enforcing the rules just like appears to have happened on other fields. Very unfortunate for all the teams and the event in general.

[Corey Balint]

Originally Posted by FreedomForce

How to solve this refereeing issue.....

1. KEEP ALL THE CAMERA'S ACTIVE, all the camera's NASA and FIRST use must be kept recorded, therefore, something like this can be replayed to the referees and/or the crowd via the big screen. This will allow the referees a replay of the match from a different angle

2. OPT FOR CAMERAS ON ROBOTS, give teams the option to add cameras to their robot (1523 did this at the Florida Regional in 2005 and it looked pretty cool). give the referees and the FIRST community full access to these cameras, this will ensure that there is no ramming ABOVE the bumper zone

3. HIRE THE REFEREE'S, get someone who is not familiar to the game, who won't play favorites, who has refereed something else before like football or basketball. (basketball being the better, due to the active amount of game play.) therefore the refs are eliminated from the blame, if the refs are paid it will only bump registration up a maximum amount of say $100, that $100 from each team = $4000 per referee team consisting of 8 refs, 4 refs at the corners, a head ref, a clock operator, a red alliance ref, and a blue alliance ref. Now the referees will not be afraid of throwing out the yellow card or red card

4. CREATE A CHALLENGE SYSTEM, allow teams a form to challenge the refs, like in football, with the things stated above, this would be a affordable way to make sure problems like what happened last Saturday won't happen again, remember, 1114 had to complain to get that 10 point penalty. but a system needs to be set up, ie: teams can challenge to get a penelty but not for removing one, an item on the feild, like a removed ringer etc.

1 and 4 would waste too much time. 2 and 3 would be too costly.
It doesn't need to be that difficult. You just need a precise ten minute video for demonstrations. A phone conference like they have had, is not the answer.

[Don Wright]

Originally Posted by David Brinza

The original score posted was 40-10. A 10-point penalty was later assessed to the red alliance for pinning, final score: 30-10. No penalty was assessed to the blue alliance.

Actually, the 10 point penalty was assessed for something like "not playing in the spirit of the game". I know. I was there and heard it and was wondering what that meant.

[Nawaid Ladak]

Originally Posted by Corey Balint

1 and 4 would waste too much time. 2 and 3 would be too costly.
It doesn't need to be that difficult. You just need a precise ten minute video for demonstrations. A phone conference like they have had, is not the answer.

If your saying what i think your saying, then you can throw out Waterloo Quarter-Final 2.4 in which the ref's replayed the match off a camera and counted the points, ask karthik about this, i want to hear what he has to say about this

[Corey Balint]

Originally Posted by FreedomForce

If your saying what i think your saying, then you can throw out Waterloo Quarter-Final 2.4 in which the ref's replayed the match off a camera and counted the points, ask karthik about this, i want to hear what he has to say about this

It has normally been in the rules that refs will not watch video of a match. And if they didn't keep track of the score correctly, maybe they shouldn't be refs at all.

[Brian Beatty]

I would like to take a different approach to this whole argument. First off, 1114's arm was not the first arm to be tore off this year. Our team's( 71 ) arm was tore off in MWR during eliminations( no call )--and there was much rejoicing. Did we like it? No. But we accepted it as part of the game. Of course, we took the opportunity to reinforce the broken area.

The question being asked right now is the wrong question. We should not ask,"Did 48 try to purposely break 1114's arm and did they intentionally pin for more than 10 seconds?" but we should ask, "How much defense should we allow in FIRST and under what conditions?". FIRST has run the whole gambit of human emotion from 2001 with no defense to 2002 and 2003, which was all out war. A game like 2001, which we at Team Hammond liked a lot, was chastised as "too boring", or "Darn--my failed offensive design couldn't be morphed into a beater to be competitive". After 2003, the game of denial, in which wonderful machines like 67 were never allowed to do their thing, FIRST started to change the rules to allow "vigorous intereaction", but protect offensive machines from annihiliation. The rules have been tightened as we went to no tipping, no wedge bots, no ramming,no high hitting, to the yellow/red card system, but still allow "vigorous interaction". As long as we allow "vigorous interaction", we will be subject to human interpretation. And as long as this human element remains, these discussions will continue.

In conclusion, I feel for 1114's tough break, but if a bad call/no call was made, that's the game. The only way to end these human element disputes is the "nuclear option" --no defense.

Sincerely,

Brian Beatty

[Joel J]

Originally Posted by FreedomForce

If your saying what i think your saying, then you can throw out Waterloo Quarter-Final 2.4 in which the ref's replayed the match off a camera and counted the points, ask karthik about this, i want to hear what he has to say about this

That Waterloo match was an exception, IMO. At most every other point where a video review was requested, it was denied because the rules state that video will not be reviewed by referees.

I like the idea of a challenge system (the difference being that a challenger receives the penalty/card/DQ if they are found to be wrong, beyond a reasonable doubt) to allow the official review of video, or some other form of strong supporting evidence.

[cziggy343]

guys (and gals), we can go through this all through the offseason. the point is that the outcome of the match is not going to be changed. there have been an exorbanent amount of times this year that very tough defense was played on us. should it have been called that we ended up tangled in the rack? maybe. but we knew that nothing would be changed.

from experience, i agree with someone earlier in the thread that through the rack, it is very hard to see wat the crap is going on. because in the one match that i was on the drive team, we went against 330, and was told to play defence wherever they went. then 535 pins us against the wall for a time that also could be questionable. during this match, we almost tipped 330 over. this would've been unintentional, but say that we tip 330, would they have counted that as intentional tipping? i dont know. but stories could be told just by me for a long while. matches won't get thrown out, scores won't be changed. the head ref's calls are final weather we agree with them or not.

my $0.02

[henryBsick]

Originally Posted by Corey Balint

It has normally been in the rules that refs will not watch video of a match. And if they didn't keep track of the score correctly, maybe they shouldn't be refs at all.

//starting to stray
As was the case for 125's first qualifying match. Brandon Martus can attest: as he was the IFI official for Archimedes. We ran with 768 who was taking match video. In some odd manner our radio signals became 'mixed' in some way. Sometimes we would have control of their bot or a portion of ours, or both of the drive bases. It was an odd cenario that I thought could never happen. The 768 video showed their drive team talking to Brandon behind the glass while no one was near the control board, yet their robot made an appearance across the screen which was not due to uncentered sticks.
Once I saw the video I told the members of 125 and 768 going to present it: "Do not expect them to even look at it, and if they do, do not expect a rematch... that isn't how FIRST works it will purely be proof of the event."
The video was shown just for future knowledge of the incedent. Brandon, if you could shed some light on the subject that would be awesome. I never talked to any official personally, I got the info from word of mouth.

Proof of Corey's point