"New" 2nd Week Scheduling Algorithm

[ChuckDickerson]

As a spin off from this thread I started this thread to specifically discuss the "new" 2nd week scheduling algorithm. The other thread was getting too long and was more of a discussion of the 1st week algorithm.

Last night I made a spreadsheet to analyze the Bayou match schedule (see attached). There were 37 teams. All the "veteran" teams (7+ year old) are color coded blue (12 teams). All the "mid year" teams (2-4 year old teams) are color coded green (12 teams). All the "rookie" (1st year) teams are red (13 teams). The lookup tab has team #, location, year started, team age (1st, 2nd, 3rd, etc. year), and an order # by team number (1-37). The schedule tab is the actual match pairings we played in New Orleans ordered from low team number on the left to highest team number on the right for both the red and blue alliances. The other tabs replace the team # with the year the team was started, team age, or order. As you can see there is nothing random about the pairings at all except whether an alliance was red or blue. It is clear that FIRST divided the teams into 3 sub-groups and intentionally partnered a veteran, a mid-year, and a rookie team for every alliance and then only randomly selected whether they were red or blue. This is not at all what I call random. FIRST has effectively segregated the teams into groups based entirely on team number/age. The only reason to do this is that FIRST is now implying that there is some advantage or disadvantage to being in one group or another. FIRST is without doubt introducing a bias for or against one group or another.

Depending on whether you are a pessimist or an optimist you can look at it in one of two ways:

1) A veteran team always HAS to play with a rookie team.

2) A rookie team always GETS to play with a veteran team.

But either way, at no time does the algorithm allow two veteran teams on the same alliance during qualification rounds. This effectively stacks the deck in favor of the rookies and against the veterans.

My warning to all teams heading into the upcoming regionals: We all pay the same money to play in the same regionals and deserve the same opportunity to play with the same teams. FIRST is not giving you what you paid for.