FIRST 101 [9/26/05]

FIRST General Forum
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Hello Class!

Today we are going to be discussing another wonderful time in FIRST history. Before there were alliances there was…

**THE BRACKET OF DOOM!
**

Imagine a time before alliances. A time when secrecy was rampid and the Delphi Forum was just in it’s baby stage. Imagine if you will, getting ramped up for a match…you see 4 robots on the field. The first odd thing you notice…there are more than 2 colors! What? Where are alliances? Wait…you must be sitting in on one of the original U.S. FIRST competitions! (For those who dont know, U.S. stands for “United States” back before FIRST was global and was slightly more narrow minded) For simplicity sake (and the fact that I know more about FIRST from 1995 on) lets discuss Ladder Logic. In 1998, the competition had something called “seeding matches”. Yes folks…this is like qualifying matches, except if you laid an egg on friday, you’d STILL get to play in elimination rounds. You would play 3 matches on friday…yes, I realize thats not too much, but lets remember this was back in the stone ages when Beverly Hills 90210 was still amazingly popular.

Did you know that music was not introduced into the competition until 1997?

Anyhow, you would play your three matches, then you would be seeded according to win loss record, and total points scored! None of this 2 times your opponents score plus the square root of Pi divided by the number of pins on Woodie Flowers vest.

Did you know that Woodie Flowers used to be the main Emcee for FIRST, traveling around the country doing various competitions.

By the time all was said and done, you would have seeds lined up and it was time to fill out the bracket.

Ahhhh yes , the bracket…the most beautiful piece of documentation in FIRST history. The pre-alliance elmination brackets were definately the work of engineers. I think I have seen forumulas for creating cold fusion make more sense than the US FIRST ladder of doom. Double elimination, winner of match 1 moves to match 25. Second place loser of match one goes to match 12B, while the 3rd place loser of match one goes to match 8C, they battle it out in a 3 way death match against the placebo (yes the placebo was actually in the losers bracket!) and bam…through the millions and millions of losers bracket rounds you go. The beauty of the bracket was the fact that the number 1 seed would get a double bye…which essentially meant they made it into the quarterfinals without even entering the field on saturday. Of course that meant the number 1 seed could sleep in, or take up a ride on “Spaceship Earth” until about 1pm when they would finally have their first match. Of course, if that isn’t confusing enough…once you get into the quarterfinals…we go from having three teams in a round to two teams in a round. Ok…how do you do that when you have three sets of balls on a field? Thats easy…just eliminate one color and completely change around the field setup. Oh by the way…we’re talking 2 out of 3 wins moves on now.

Are you confused yet?

Lets just say, you had to be there to appreciate it. You know…stay up til 1am friday night calculating everyones score so you can figure out the seeds, make up a braket to see who you were playing in the first round the next day, just to find out that you were off by 1 point and the whole bracket you spent half the night working out was complete trash!

::Deep Breath::

Like I said…you had to be there to appreciate it.

Til next time
-Professor Grady

4 Likes
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Sorry Andy, I’m going to have to call you on that one. I distinctly remember the whole audience doing the Macarena when the competition was held inside EPCOT in the theater across from USA Pavilion (in 1995 and 1996). :rolleyes:

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Ohh, the bracket…

It really was a thing of glory to look at. At the championship event, I think it was on a piece of paper that was 11" x 17". The amazing thing about it was, that they didn’t publish any of the seedings until Friday morning. So you were literally guessing as to your ranking, or you had to compile all the data yourself.

The other interesting part about the bracket, was the huge difference between being the 1st seed and the 2nd seed. As Andy mentioned, the 1st seed had a bye until the quarterfinals, while the second seed maybe got a bye through the first round. Considering that in 1998 there were only 4 seeding matches, you can see that would be a lot of teams clumped at the top.

Also, you never wanted to end up on the losers side of the bracket, especially early on in the day. Matches in the losers bracket came fast and furious. If I recall correctly, in 1998 Wildstang got knocked to the losers side of the bracket very early on in the day. (They were mere inches away from a perfect score, but ended up with a zero. They maxed out the multipliers, but their ball which would have been their base score, was ruled as not scored.) They proceeded to the losers side of the bracket, and made a phenomenal run of at least 8 straight victories. Unfortunately they lost in the final play in match to the quarterfinals. (They were beaten by Team 1, I believe)

Does anyone have a copy of the 1998 ladder. Blank would be great, but filled in would be even better. I’d love to see it. I can offer up some NiagaraFIRST merchandise for someone who produces a complete 1998 Nationals bracket.

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I stand corrected Dave…actually if I remember correctly, I was thinking of the regional competitions. Music was definately very active at nationals…HOWEVER…it was not played during matches back in those days. That didn’t happen until 1997.

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The bracket was great… it was a challenge of coordination, scouting, math, and writing small. The slightest error could change your whole day’s game plan.

And no doubt everyone… #2 seed was the worst place to be. You got a bye, but until the round before the quarterfinals where you were put into the thick of the competition. If you lost that match, you got dumped into the loser’s bracket. At this point, most of these teams in the losers bracket have been playing with one loss all day and have been flying through 5 or 6 matches. It was all on the line and it was a serious battle over there. It wasn’t a nice place to be for only your second match of the day. Trust me.

In those days, the place to be was 3-6th seed. That usually offered a pretty decent run through the bracket.

Thanks for the flashback, Professor. I think I do have one of these brackets somewhere… I’ll have to take a dig someday soon.

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And to be even MORE specific, the Macerena wasn’t released until 1996, I can remember dancing to it in Epcot at the wrap party with the Buzz 175 team…

But ahh the days of the psychotic bracket… that was nuts!! and the days when Dean and Woodie could actually be at every competition! Another great FIRST 101 Andy!

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You might have to give up some merchandise… :slight_smile: We can produce some footage for sure - I’ll have to re-review the tapes to see what’s all in there…I assume you’re looking for the bracket of how teams finished up…

And - I clearly have heard some music in the pre-97 matches. But, they may not me from regionals persay.

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Amy, the challenge is laid. If you get me a copy of the full elimination bracket from 1998, I will present you with a NiagaraFIRST.org polo shirt. If you pull the data off of video, it won’t be as good a scanned copy of an original, but probably shirt worthy.

Considering the Technokats won the whole thing back in 1998, you may be one of the few teams who held on to that bracket.

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If anyone is interested you can find all the rules to the 1998 competition here: http://www.first-a-holics.com/competitions/1998/

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Ahhh… Ladder Logic, my rookie year. That bracket was definitely daunting. And as a rookie team, we had no scouting or organization at all, so we pretty much just took things as they came. That was one of my favorite robots, though. We were one of the few teams that could suck balls out of the center goal. To the horror and dismay of our opponents at times. Unfortunately, picking up balls was much more time consuming, and scoring on the rails was difficult, so we didn’t do particularly well. Seeing the looks on our opponents’ faces as their score was halved, then quartered… that was pretty priceless, though. Had that been an alliance sort of game, we’d have made a heck of a support robot.

If the bracket does show up sometime, Team 57 is gonna show up as the Insomniacs, though. We were going through an identity crisis our rookie year.

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I too remember the Macarena in 1996.

Dave, you were a member of the audience in 1996, so by deduction you were doing the Macarena, yes? I’m not going to say whether I was ‘in the audience’ or not, but I do remember someone falling off the benches or breaking one, thus the ‘no dancing on the benches’ rule.

Excellent lesson Prof Andy.

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A very minor correction. I know that in 1996 at the DEKA Regional Team 155 (then known as the Berlin Basher) had a pep band. Here is a picture of part of the band to prove that: http://usfirst.berlinwall.org/history/2/96-team.jpg (not exactly the best picture but you can see the trombone, drum sticks, and if you look very closely you can see a clarinet.)

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Picky picky…band music was played at competitions well before my time. I’m talking about DJ’s playing music!

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In 1996 I remember more of the music in the pits(and they were the pits) . The Macarena over and over and over. It was extremely HOT in the tent with a rather transparent roof and side curtains. The ambulances were kept busy picking up heat cases, including one of our students. It was a loooong uncovered walk to the stage and maybe seating for 600. The standing on the benches was more for seeing the matches.

Ah! The good old days!

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Can I get any credit for a complete bracket from the New England regional?
I’ll still scan it for old time’s sake an post it here. Although I don’t have an 11"x17" scanner, so it I’ll have to piece it together.

Edit: Picture added.

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We’ve got the 98 brackets completely filled in, and the 98 GLR bracket filled in…47 and 45 duked it out at GLR, but 47 prevailed…
I can scan and post them at a later date.

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[quote=Ogre]Can I get any credit for a complete bracket from the New England regional?QUOTE]

Great job Ogre. You get extra credit for this class. As you can all see, this was an extremely complicated venture. If you can read it, and make any sense of it…well then you are a true FIRST-A-HOLIC![/quote]

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sighs How I long for the days of 1v1v1, the color white in a competition, the 13 FIRST songs looped over and over. Don’t forget Andy while we’re on the topic of music initially FIRST didn’t pay DJs they had a CD which they obtained the rights to play the music on of about 13 or so tracks and they would loop this for both days of the compeition. You were almost sure to hear Cotton Eye Joe 3 or 4 times and is that really a bad thing? The bracket was pretty awesome. I’m proud to say that I was one who was there to expirence it. There is something to be said for entering the looser’s bracket and then climbing all the way back to the finals, as my team did in 1996…it was amazing and had a level of drama rarely seen in today’s compeititions, everything hinged on the next match you played and it was win or go home.

Long Live Hexagon Havoc!!!

Justin