Why don’t game announcers tell the crowd what the penalties were for? Often there are penalty points and nobody says why. Sure, a student from a drive team on the field can ask, but it would be much better to let everybody know. I was once told that FIRST did not want to slow down the game but there is plenty of time between matches.
This really bothered me yesterday.
Was watching the stream of the KC regional and announcer wouldn’t say what a yellow card was for or what tech fouls or foul were called for. Very frustrating.
Hopefully someone can convince FIRST or the announcers to say what the fouls and penalties were called for.
The game announcers should be calling yellow and red cards as they happen after the match concludes. Fouls stopped being called a few years back when the real-time scoring started getting quicker and FIRST wanted either a faster turn around time or better flow going right into the final scores.
If announcers know what the foul is as it happens, some will call it during play-by-play. If a foul has happened numerous times throughout the competition, the head referee may elect to ask the emcee to remind teams and the audience of the specific violation.
Of course, if your team is involved in the match of question, you can always send a representative to the head ref question box to inquire.
At Michigan events there are announcing. Also they were educating teams to be careful about specific penalties, like tech fouls ending up in 50 or more points.
If the refs aren’t necessarily tracking those, then how do you expect word to get to the announcers as to what the fouls are?
Now if everyone ran Cheesy Arena, we’d know what fouls happened on which robot. 
I still am not convinced. Every foul, penalty, yellow or red card is input to the computer during the match. They are reviewed before the scores are announced. Then the scores are posted and the announcer announces them. At this point we wait for the field to be reset. During this break would be a great time to tell the crowd what penalties, if any, were called.
You’re thinking of Chezy Arena. If a foul is entered on an official field, there is no way of telling what it is for.* It’s a Foul, or a Tech Foul. Nothing more.
Of course, the teams involved may ask the Head Ref in the Question Box, and that may or may not give the result you want as refs don’t have to remember what they gave fouls/tech fouls for. You might get lucky.
*Cards, not so much–those tend to get remembered and announced.
Wow, I assumed that when they pressed whatever it is that they pressed on the touchscreen it indicated more than that. It seems like it should, but I do understand that it would make it difficult for the refs as there is little time and they need to be concentrating on the next foul.
And what is this "Chezy Arena I keep hearing about?
Chezy Arena is used by Chezy Champs, developed by Teh Chezy Pofs (er, actually The Cheesy Poofs–they’re serious about this one). It’s their version of FMS. Last year penalties were input after the match by the head ref on a tablet, by type. Not sure what they’ll do this year…
FIRST needs to use this at all events…says the guy who does not dare to volunteer to be a ref.
As a ref, this would be nearly impossible - I’m concentrating more on the game action, and entering specific details would be time consuming - and you want me to concentrate on the game, or else I miss fouls. This has happened to me, actually. I was looking at the retrieval zone very closely, noticed a tech foul and went to enter it. In that process, I think that I missed another one but since I didn’t see it I couldn’t call it. Having to enter details of what it was would delay me even further.
The refs should (and some are better at this than others - personally I think I’m somewhere near the middle of the pack on this) vigorously wave their flag and point at the offending robot, so there’s some type of immediate feedback as to what we’re calling (but not why, though hopefully it’s obvious).
No. Referees have a hard enough job, we don’t need to have them have to scroll to find the specific penalty to assess the foul for.
Minor penalties stopped being announced a few years back because it usually lead to more questions/people in the question box seeking clarification. Now if a penalty constantly is being issued, then the head ref may ask the announcer to make an announcement about it. Red cards and yellow cards are still announced.
Red Cards and Yellow Cards were not announced at our event this past weekend. I wish they were – it seemed like about half the field had a yellow card by the end of quals (presumably for reaching outside the airship?) and I just wish there was a better feedback loop to stop that from happening. I think the head ref might’ve been telling the kids on the field after the match, but I’m not sure?
As others have said, having to enter the foul details would be too time consuming.
What might be possible is:
Add another Ref to the rotation. The additional ref would listen on the radio, and write down the calls. As penalties are entered on the touchpad, the ref can call out the penalty on the radio. Note: Only Ref’s are on that channel. Announcer is not. Nor do I think you want the Announcer listening in.
The reason you don’t want penalties announced real-time, is sometimes the wrong penalty is entered (foul vs tech foul), and sometimes you decide after the fact, that it really wasn’t a penalty. Those get corrected before scores are finalized.
I think there is also the issue of “too much paperwork” to document everything.
Thanks, I appreciate all the replies. While I would love to know what all the penalties are, I certainly do not want to add to the job of the refs. They already have a difficult job. I mistakenly thought they pressed something that told the computer what the call was, but since they do not, it would be way too much to add.
Fouls used to be tracked, a number of years ago.
Then after one particularly disastrous game (I forget exactly what year) FIRST changed the rules to state that refs would NOT be tracking fouls, because it was too distracting. The time it took for the ref to look up* the rule number and write it down took away from watching the field.
Cards can usually be announced because they have to be tracked to a specific team anyway. The head ref has to show the card in front of the driver station. And they’re more memorable.
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- Do you have all the rules memorized by number? Didn’t think so.