Why Give Open Bids to the Championship?

[GaryVoshol]

Originally Posted by Bob Steele

//snipped for brevity - but go back and read all that good stuff...

Repped.

Several years ago FRC had a multi-tier system for CMP pre-registration. Teams who had not gone for the previous 3 years could sign up immediately. The reasoning expressed for this was that FIRST wanted every student to experience the CMP sometime in a 4-year FRC career. Then a week later teams that had not gone for 2 years could enroll, then teams that had not gone the prior year, and finally open registration.

But as I recall it turned out that not many teams signed up in those first couple weeks. If your team had not attended for at least 3 years, you probably weren't making plans to ever attend. It was likely a financial issue or school travel restrictions. So they made the current two-tier system.

Another factor is that Atlanta (and presumably St. Louis) can accomodate more teams. A perusal of the archives shows 291 teams were in Houston in 2003. There are now somewhere in the neighborhood of 340-350 teams. Even with more regional events, that's still an increase of open slots.

[Peter Matteson]

Originally Posted by Alan Anderson

Nothing is keeping you from planning to go every year.

You don't even need to bring a robot if you don't get in during the open registration or through winning a qualifying award. It's not just about competing. You can volunteer and help make things run smoother for everyone. You can attend the workshops. You can watch the FTC and FLL matches. You can still be inspired by other teams' robots.

I had my ticket and was planning on going with other mentors before we got in off the waitlist. When it comes to the students however that situation is way more complex with our school district.

If we hadn't gotten in I probably would have joined a friend's team for the weekend to help out, or if I'm feeling masochistic I would volunteer to inspect .

[Nawaid Ladak]

So i think i got a really neat idea that might actually work.

What if FIRST held "heats" or "Last Minute Qualifier" events on Tues/Wed or Just Wed.?

The system would run like this

32 Teams per heat
3 Qualifying Matches for each team
Alliance Selection (4 Alliances).
Heat Alliance Winners advance to compete at Championships
1 Additional spot handed out to a team so that they may compete at Championships (determined among referee's, and field staff)*

These events would be run on a low cost system. no video boards or black curtains would be active. no MC etc.

Teams that want to compete in these "heats" would pay $2,000 to compete in one of these events and then another $3500 to compete at the Championship Event.

The event would be pretty short, 16 qualification matches on a 7-8 minute cycle (considering some of the field stuff would be in the process of being set up, ie Black Curtain's Video Board etc.) and a minimum of six elimination matches would bring the event's length down to a short 4.5 hours.

Heat 1: 8:30am - 1:00pm
Heat 2: 1:00pm - 5:30pm

Considering you would have four fields, you could get 256 teams to compete for 32 spots each day
(If the event was done Tues/Wed, then teams that did not qualify in their heat Tuesday, could compete in one on Wednesday).

*= if the winning alliance consists of 3 teams and a backup robot, the backup robot would gain the 4th AQ spot.

What do you guys think?

[Lil' Lavery]

As a quick note, if you really want the Championship to be about putting the best teams on the field, you're not going to allow 350 teams to attend regardless of how they qualify. If you're adamant about keeping the 4 divisions, you'll invite ~200-240 for 50-60 teams per division. If you don't mind ditching the divisions, you're going to invite 50-60 total teams.

That's going to drive up the matches/team and remove more of he lower-par teams from the qualifications that introduce entropy to the rankings by dragging down higher caliber teams when playing matches with them. This will result in more accurate rankings and a higher average-level of teams at the event, without so few teams as to create unreasonably short turnaround times (as happens in small events) or scarcity of robot types and quality robots by the time the 24th selection roles around.

[JaneYoung]

Reported.