[FRC Blog] Two Championship Survey Results and Path Forward

[Deke]

Originally Posted by Rman1923

But I would like to point out that two championships will completely ruin the prestige of going to champs.

This is what concerns me too. I love that they are working on ways to get more teams involved, but that can be done through other means. For example, FRC is extremely expensive, can there be more focus on reducing costs instead of diluting the championship? I bet more people and teams would love to be involved if they could afford it. I would think more focus on growing the number of teams could be more inspirational than growing the number of teams at championships.

[Loose Screw]

Originally Posted by Infinity2718

This is what concerns me too. I love that they are working on ways to get more teams involved, but that can be done through other means. For example, FRC is extremely expensive, can there be more focus on reducing costs instead of diluting the championship? I bet more people and teams would love to be involved if they could afford it. I would think more focus on growing the number of teams could be more inspirational than growing the number of teams at championships.

FIRST has a system that works as a lower-cost FRC: FTC.

[MrRoboSteve]

I agree that the poll shows that, of those responding, there's more negative than positive feedback.

That said, it's possible that there's no solution that makes most teams happy. Here's a hypothetical scenario to illustrate the concept.

Frank discussed 22 "product attributes" ("elements of the championship experience"). Let's imagine a universe where FRC teams have decisive product attributes distributed in this way*:

33% - (1) Seeing and competing with the teams with the best robots in FRC
33% - (2) The experience of attending a major, multi-day event with my team
33% - (3) Keeping attendance costs reasonable

Now suppose you created three ideas for Champs experiences, each of which optimized for one of these attributes. Say along these lines**:

(1) Single WW Champs
(2) Super Regional Champs
(3) State Champs

If you polled any one of these using a "do you support this" question, you'd see the same or worse results than the poll that was conducted.

So put yourselves in FIRST's shoes. You need to select the choice that is best aligned with FIRST's goals, and is realistic about the resources that you have available. You are solving a unique problem -- you run one of the largest HS activity championships in the US***. Any of your choices will make a decent sized set of teams unhappy.

*I selected these items because they seemed to be mostly non-overlapping attributes and seem somewhat representative of the points of view I've read. Please don't take this as my reading of what teams actually think or that the percentages are anything but a hypothetical. What will you do?
**These actually map to the three models used in other HS activities in the US, based on the research I did last week.

***I think it's actually the largest, but haven't been looking at data for long enough to say for certain.

[dag0620]

Originally Posted by connor.worley

What about this: FIRST runs 2 champs with a postseason tournament to decide the true winner. Then, some time down the road, they add two more championships and just send all 32 division winners to the postseason event. Kind of like super-regionals, just a backwards way of getting there.

I sometimes get the feeling this might be the plan HQ is actually shooting for all along. In some ways it make sense as it allows for growth of the Super Regional tier as the program grows, instead of just a flip the switch change.