FIRST does have other options re Enistein.

[EricH]

Originally Posted by swwrobotics

Just wondering, does any one know what HoF stands for?

Hall of Fame.

HoF is the CD shorthand. The only way in is to win the Championship Chairman's Award.

[Alexa Stott]

Originally Posted by EricH

Hall of Fame.

HoF is the CD shorthand.

It's actually everybody shorthand. People refer to the hall of fame in sports as "the hof."

Back to the thread with you all...

[Astrokid248]

Yeah, not to be biased, but Pat is right. What about Newton? We triple-balanced just as fast as Archimedes did, and put up just as many balls. You can't say Archimedes would've beaten us, and you can't say that Archimedes could defeat the crazy defense that 16 played. I can't say we'd actually beat Galileo if given the chance. Don't make wild statements like that. While yeah, most people think it should've been Archimedes versus Newton and yeah, because of the strong northern bias of FRC they would pick the Eh Team when betting, the fact of the matter is that neither alliance could connect to the field. The best robots for this year's game (and all its unforseen field failures) were 25's, 16's and 180's. Saying otherwise is disrespecting the entire FIRST community and the FIRST philosophy (which we should be protecting in light of what the organization did to itself).

[Gary Dillard]

Dave, I can't even believe you posted that, and I'm not sure it even warrants me wasting my time responding. " in all certainty the wrong outcome was realized". Really? REALLY???? I'm glad you're so certain. I guess you didn't notice that the Galileo alliance could triple balance as well but rarely needed to because they were so far ahead in their matches due to Bomb Squad starving the competition of balls to score.
I've been pleasantly surprised that there haven't been more posts like yours; I think everyone understands that there were 4 good alliances and we would all have liked to had a competitive final 4 take place. Your post is nothing short of ignorant.

[James Tonthat]

I think instead of going to the championship, we should have Dave review all the footage of the regional season. That way he can review all the facts of the match and tell us who should win the championship.

It'd save the rest of us a bunch of time off from work, school, etc. to come up with strategies and things like that during the competition.

[pathew100]

Originally Posted by James Tonthat

I think instead of going to the championship, we should have Dave review all the footage of the regional season. That way he can review all the facts of the match and tell us who should win the championship.

It'd save the rest of us a bunch of time off from work, school, etc. to come up with strategies and things like that during the competition.

Exactly. Or just use the predictive OPR calculator, figure out who's at the top, send them their trophies and call it a day. Much easier than everyone having to go to St Louis....

[lorem3k]

Another user mentioned in a different thread that he felt that the winning alliance would get a bad reputation as "the teams that only won because of comm issues". I agree that the communication issues on Einstein were terrible, but we shouldn't dismiss the fact that every robot there was a quality machine. Doing so would be extremely shortsighted and disrespectful to the teams that put countless hours of work in this season.

[AmoryG]

Originally Posted by lorem3k

Another user mentioned in a different thread that he felt that the winning alliance would get a bad reputation as "the teams that only won because of comm issues". I agree that the communication issues on Einstein were terrible, but we shouldn't dismiss the fact that every robot there was a quality machine. Doing so would be extremely shortsighted and disrespectful to the teams that put countless hours of work in this season.

I'm not saying that 4334 did not have a quality robot, they did. They worked very well with 2056/1114, especially when it came to tripple balancing (which won them the matches that mattered the most). But I would say that since my rookie year in 2008, I've always thought the alliance with the best 3rd robot won the division. 148, won it all in 2008, and they probably had one of the best auto/lap bots that year. 971 was completely overlooked in 2009, even though they went undefeated at their only regional event. 177 I thought was an exceptional mid ranged scorer and had a very nice drivetrain. 973 was a steal and should not have been the second to last pick (I remember either the 111 or 254 scouters saying they were the 7nth robot in their depth chart). And 16? The robot ranked voted #7 best robot in the world chosen as a 3rd pick is completely absurd and really says it all.

I don't even understand the logic behind saying individually, the winning alliance members weren't that good. 16 won 3 regionals, 25 won a district event and were district champs, and 180 won a regional and was a finalist at another event. All as captains or first picks. You don't get much better than that.

[Racer26]

I have no doubts in my mind that the Championship COULD have ended up with 16, 25, and 180 as Champions regardless of the field issues.

Just as I have no doubts it could have just as easily been 207, 233, and 987, or 1114, 2056, and 4334, or 118, 548, and 2194.

It wasn't a fair fight. Yes, the field issues were pervasive and affected both alliances, but didn't do so equally, and thus each match was virtually assigned a winner by random chance, thanks to the unreliability of the field.

It is absolutely unfounded to blame the teams for what happened. A few of the teams that mysteriously started having issues on Einstein had no such issues at any point prior in the season. 4334 included.

In my mind: Inviting all 12 Einstein teams to CMP 2013 is not enough. Most of them are either already qualified as of right now (16, 25, 180, 1114), or have a reasonable expectation that they will earn their way in at a Regional event in 2013 (118, 233, 987, 2056), either through winning a regional, or RCA/EI.

Inviting all 12 teams to CMP 2013, with no Registration fee? That's better. Though I would actually prefer to see all 12 teams crowned 2012 Championship Winners (complete with the invitation to the 2013 CMP), and let them pay their CMP registrations. The game played on Einstein was not Rebound Rumble, so we will never know who the true Rebound Rumble champions would have been.

[Undertones]

Every single thread regarding Einstein is exactly the same right now.

Everyone seems to think a different alliance would have won had there been no radio issues. There is, however, 2 things I think we can all agree on;

1. All the teams of Einstein earned their way there. Through one way or another, every single team on Einstein deserved to be there and was part of a very strong alliance.
2. There was in fact field problems. It's nobody's call to say who was more or less affected by the field. It's just how it is.

Now, what happened sucked, and I'm fairly certain that everybody wanted nothing more than a fair shot at the world title. With that in mind, I support and congratulate the winning alliance. Nobody should ever hold someone's accomplishments against them.

Now, there's pretty much infinite options of what FIRST could do to try to right this situation. They have already apologized and told us they would get to the bottom of what happened. The best and most reasonable option I have seen so far is an invitation to the 2013 Championship, and I would not be complaining if it was on the house. Now, what they do is ultimately up to them, and we just have to place what little faith we may have back into the system.

As I said in a previous post regarding Einstein, learn from the past and apply it to the future.

Also, although this thread may be controversial, everyone is entitled to their own opinion. Please respect that.

Mac

[philso]

Since it is so likely that most of the teams on Einstein will earn their way back next year, inviting them back to compete may be superfluous.

How about inviting the team members, including those who graduate this year, to sit in front row seats to personally witness Einstien matches where no dropped comms issues affect the performance of the robots. Of course this is after a season of faultess performance from the FMS where all instances of dead robots are shown to be truly due to faults in the robot. I think it is fair to say that the FIRST community holds all the teams that made it to Einstein in high regard and would be happy for them to serve as our representatives to confirm that the dropped comms issues have truly been fixed.

[Karthik]

Originally Posted by philso

Since it is so likely that most of the teams on Einstein will earn their way back next year, inviting them back to compete may be superfluous.

Not necessarily true. Of the 12 2011 Einstein teams, 8 did not have prequalified status for 2012. Only 4 of these teams qualified for the 2012 World Championship. Teams as strong 177, 217, 968 and 1503 all did not make it back to St. Louis.

[Marc S.]

I think it's also important to recognize the alliances that did not make it to Einstein very possibly because of comm issues.

Like 341, 254, and 78 who put up the all time high score of 128 points in the curie semis, but were eliminated in the finals because of communication issues. (*edit, as stated below, this however was not the fields fault.)

Or what about 1717, 469, and 2471. They had (very arguably) the 2 best scorers from 2012 on their alliance but were eliminated in the semis of Newton after 1717 died in almost every match. (*edit, turns out this was caused by a bad cable that linked the crio to the radio of their robot, so not the fault of the field)

It's impossible to know if they would have won their division but because of communication issues we will never know.

[thefro526]

Originally Posted by Marc S.

Like 341, 254, and 78 who put up the all time high score of 128 points in the curie semis, but were eliminated in the finals because of communication issues.

As much as I'd like to place blame, The Daisy Poof Strike Alliance was not eliminated due to the Same Comms issues that plagued many others. Look at Jared's posts in the other threads.

Basically, 78's radio came unplugged (Yes, a comms issue, but one that could've been prevented) and 341 had shooter issues and lost their backup coupon.

[Jon Stratis]

All the analysis in the world won't give you a guarantee of who would have won. Let me give you a real-world FIRST example from Logomotion.

Last year at North Star, things did not go as people expected. We were the 7th seeded alliance, but we've been there before, and through good team work made it to the finals against the "super alliance". If you looked at all the video footage leading up to that, there would be no doubt in your mind who would win that match, and by a large margin. The first one went as expected, and we lost. The second one we did even worse, and they did just as well... but the super alliance made a mistake and got a red card (two red cards for two different mistakes, actually). That was something no one could have predicted, and was something that alliance hadn't done leading up to that point. So we go into the third match with lifted spirits and an air of determination... only to see our elevator break during autonomous. Our drive team didn't give up, and went on the defensive instead - the first time they played defense across 2 regionals. We ended up winning that match by only a couple of points, and the regional. Who would have predicted it?

So, since those regional finals went against what all prediction and analysis of prior matches would have expected, should we recognize those teams like you want to recognize those from Einstein this year? If you doubt my analysis, Just look up videos from North Star in 2011 and do your own.

FIRST matches are not deterministic. Robot performance is (sadly) not a constant, and neither is drive team or human player performance. Take a look at the NCAA Basketball tournament for a good analogy. Millions of people every year make their picks and enter them into pools... and millions of people every year are wrong. Even the experts on TV are wrong every year. Not necessarily about everything, but wrong about a significant number of outcomes of games.