FRC Blogged - Doing the Right Thing

[Dave McLaughlin]

Originally Posted by Navid Shafa

This is the most valid argument for sending them to champs. No one who watched them play will argue that they are of less caliber than teams who are already going to champs or may be sitting on the wait-list either.

Aside from the fact that in this case 3 teams who had not in fact won championship bids would recieve them. Imagine if the mc at central had come out and said that a disc had been missed and the correct score was in favor of the red alliance but the ruling of a blue alliance victory was not going to be over turned. Should the red alliance then be given bids as well because they were told they had in fact won the match but would not be credited the win? How would the blue alliance feel knowing that their victory was false and empty?

In my opinion it is just a shame that it ended this way, and giving bids to the blue alliance would set a dangerous prescendent.

[EricH]

Giving bids to the finalist alliance due to things that happen at a competition event is not unprecedented. However, giving bids to the finalist alliance in this situation would set a dangerous precedent.

The most recent of these* was due to a verified bad call. SVR 08, F3 as I recall, the Head Ref ruled that a trackball on the overpass being contacted by an opponent was not scored (actually, opponent contact had no effect on scored or not scored that year by that method). But, instead of changing the score, and sending the match the other way (the direct effect of correcting the score), which is what could have been done, half an hour after the finals were over there was a replay. The "opponent" previously mentioned won the replay, "confirming" them as the winners. HQ stepped in within a week and said, in effect, "These teams should have won, our ref made a mistake, all teams in the eliminations get bids".

Central Washington 2013 is what SHOULD have happened in SVR 2008. (I wonder if the refs had that in the back of their minds?) I think the situation where a referee or scorer misses a call, or makes a bad one, then admits to and corrects it does not warrant extra bids being handed out--after all, they did admit that they screwed up, and they did correct the error, even if it was a bit later than teams would like. If, however, the mistake is not admitted to and/or corrected, and it is later discovered, then there is already precedent for giving the finalist alliance bids, in that case and that case only.

*I'm not including Einstein 2012 and its field issues; the only other one I can think of was Arizona 2004, which is not the same situation at all.

[bduddy]

Originally Posted by EricH

Giving bids to the finalist alliance due to things that happen at a competition event is not unprecedented. However, giving bids to the finalist alliance in this situation would set a dangerous precedent.

The most recent of these* was due to a verified bad call. SVR 08, F3 as I recall, the Head Ref ruled that a trackball on the overpass being contacted by an opponent was not scored (actually, opponent contact had no effect on scored or not scored that year by that method). But, instead of changing the score, and sending the match the other way (the direct effect of correcting the score), which is what could have been done, half an hour after the finals were over there was a replay. The "opponent" previously mentioned won the replay, "confirming" them as the winners. HQ stepped in within a week and said, in effect, "These teams should have won, our ref made a mistake, all teams in the eliminations get bids".

Central Washington 2013 is what SHOULD have happened in SVR 2008. (I wonder if the refs had that in the back of their minds?) I think the situation where a referee or scorer misses a call, or makes a bad one, then admits to and corrects it does not warrant extra bids being handed out--after all, they did admit that they screwed up, and they did correct the error, even if it was a bit later than teams would like. If, however, the mistake is not admitted to and/or corrected, and it is later discovered, then there is already precedent for giving the finalist alliance bids, in that case and that case only.

*I'm not including Einstein 2012 and its field issues; the only other one I can think of was Arizona 2004, which is not the same situation at all.

I don't think they're exactly comparable, and I think it both cases the refs made the right call in the end. At SVR 2008, IIRC (I was there) the refs had earlier made an incorrect call similar to the one that was made in the final match (that a ball being supported by an opposing robot did not count), and it was never publicly corrected or announced that the call had been incorrect. Again IIRC, a robot on the initially losing alliance spent a significant amount of time at the end of the match attempting to partially support the trackball rather than perhaps trying to score another way, so they were still operating under that assumption. That's why I think the fairest decision there was indeed to replay the match and send both teams to Championships. There was no such confusion about the rules here, only a simple miscount; thus, as unfortunate as it might be, I don't believe the finalist alliance deserves to go to championships any more than any other teams that did not qualify.

[EricH]

Originally Posted by bduddy

I don't think they're exactly comparable, and I think it both cases the refs made the right call in the end. At SVR 2008, IIRC (I was there) the refs had earlier made an incorrect call similar to the one that was made in the final match (that a ball being supported by an opposing robot did not count), and it was never publicly corrected or announced that the call had been incorrect. Again IIRC, a robot on the initially losing alliance spent a significant amount of time at the end of the match attempting to partially support the trackball rather than perhaps trying to score another way, so they were still operating under that assumption. That's why I think the fairest decision there was indeed to replay the match and send both teams to Championships.

HQ was the one who issued the invitation to CMP, well after the event. The replay was the problem call there.

Referees make that sort of call all the time. For whatever reason, a match is scored incorrectly. Usually, the score is quietly corrected later; only rarely is there any announcement. For this particular call, that was not an option. All the time through, they had the option to adjust the score. That was all it would have taken to correct the situation. However, the head ref called for a replay, which I will admit he did have grounds for (human error being one of the items a replay can be called on), but was probably not the best decision. I know that everybody watching via webcast and on CD was wondering what was going on, why is there a replay, why don't they just adjust the scores--and the real kicker was that some of the robots were already in their crates when the replay was called for!

The reason I'm calling that up as a close case was that there, even though the basis for the mistake was different, it was a VERY similar mistake, the type that changes a winner. In that case, however, the announcement of the error (and the handling of the results) were handled in such a way that maximum confusion resulted. In the case at hand, there was minimum confusion, though there was much disappointment.

[dodar]

Originally Posted by Navid Shafa

This is the most valid argument for sending them to champs. No one who watched them play will argue that they are of less caliber than teams who are already going to champs or may be sitting on the wait-list either.

So should any alliances that lost in the finals of a regional because of a referee's opinion of gameplay be given spots at champs? I do feel bad for the alliance that was told they won but actually lost, but they lost; I've been a part of matches where we were told we won but then were overturned and vice-versa, so I do know how this feels. But to allow those teams to go because of a regional staff mistake would open up a can of worms into the "but we lost because of x, but we think we really won, so we think we deserve a spot too."

[Racer26]

Eric, in reply to my earlier post, you implied field reset would have found the disc. Maybe.

They would have taken a quick look around, and if nobody saw it, they'd have grabbed a spare and played on. Game pieces go missing from fields all the time.

[dodar]

Originally Posted by Racer26

Eric, in reply to my earlier post, you implied field reset would have found the disc. Maybe.

They would have taken a quick look around, and if nobody saw it, they'd have grabbed a spare and played on. Game pieces go missing from fields all the time.

No, it would have been found. When the next match had started the counter would have immediately registered a disc even before a shot was made. That happened somewhere last week when 6 discs were left in the top goal. As soon as the match started the alliance immediately, literally less than a second, jumped out to a 36 point lead. The announcer realized it immediately and made the comment.