First off, a huge thank you to everyone who voted this week. Voter turnout was awesome and we can’t stress enough how happy Mike and I are with the amount of submissions we got this week. (Even if it means a heck of a lot more work for us!)
Tonight at 10:30PM EST we will be hosting another LIVE episode of Mike and Justin in the Morning where Mike and I will release the Week 1 Rankings of the Top 25 teams in FRC. Last week we topped out at 122 viewers, can we break that record this week?
As always, if you have anything you would like to discuss, shoot an email to [email protected] and we’d be happy to bring it up. Also, if you want to give us some insight on something you saw this past weekend that you think is noteworthy please let us know, as much as we would love too, Mike and I can’t watch every match or be at every event.
Also, we have two viewer videos to show that are AWESOME! If you would like to create your own segment please email us and we would be happy to talk to you about it. It could be anything from previewing a particular regional or making your own predictions or anything!
We can’t for the show tonight and we hope you can join us!
I don’t know all of the stats, but I will say that 118 tops 1477 in my books.
As two machines going head to head, 118 definitely showed to be the more dominant robot, with 1477 playing a close second. 118’s alliance was simply eliminated from the event because their elimination alliance failed to balance a bridge in their last match vs. a three robot balance, which is a devastating deficit to overcome with pure hoop offense.
The three robot balance might also be a reason why people prefer 148 over 1477 as well. Not saying that 148 was solely responsible, but their little stinger has received a lot of attention.
Nothing away from 1477, they have an excellent robot and deserved every ounce of the Alamo win, but I think these rankings really depend on what different people saw and what different people value.
That’s like saying the Green Bay Packers should be rated over the New York Giants who won the Superbowl because the Packers offense is more spectacular.
118 and 148 are more known in the FIRST community (you don’t see very many threads even mentioning 1477 while there are threads dedicated solely to 118 and 148’s robots. So matter what they did they wouldn’t get the respect they deserve).
Results are what count not style points.
You are no better than your alliance when it comes to win loss. That doesn’t mean that the winner necessarily had the best robot. It means they had the best alliance.
So what’s the point of doing this dog and pony show if people are just going to vote for the teams they heard of and blow off teams that don’t get as much exposure? Just put the usual suspects up and ignore the rest then.
I fail to see why it’s implausible that people legitimately believe one team is better than another, even if the team they think is better didn’t win the regional.
The best robot doesn’t always win. Nor does the best golfer/tennis player/swimmer/etc. That doesn’t stop someone from being ranked 1 in the world even though they don’t always win.
Despite 2337 winning the Kettering district (which their alliance deserved to win) I feel like team 3322 should have ranked higher than them. Also, I believe 85 B.O.B. had a more impressive competition at Gull Lake than 51 did at Kettering. I think we will see better rankings around week 4. Until then, it really is gonna be about who the top names are, who posts the most videos on chief, etc.
Edit: Just saw 33 at the number 6 spot. For a team that didn’t get their shooter working correctly until day 2 of competition…I don’t think we saw them compete enough to put them that high…at all…I think they have the potential to do very good, but we haven’t seen it in it’s effect yet.
For those that believe in OPR, below is the top-50 OPR from week 1 (thanks bongle). This OPR includes OPR points awarded for the coopertition bridge during quals.
While popularity certainly plays a role in some of the picks, these numbers show that some of the discussed controversial picks may not be so controversial. 118 and 1477 both look like they put up a lot of offense. The numbers show 118 put up a little more. 1477 stepped up their game when the chips were down. Who’ll be better come St. Louis? It’s too early to tell, but odds are that they’ll both be in the hunt.
I think that it is hard for voters to accurately get a feel for which robots at an event are the best, and how robots from different events compare with each other. If I wasn’t from Michigan and I saw that 33 was first pick at Kettering, I might rank them pretty high.
My ballot tended to be a mixture of OPR and robot performance in eliminations, with a skew toward events that I thought were more competitive. Hatboro-Horsham had some amazing scoring machines, but outside 3476 I wasn’t very impressed by San Diego. (399 over 3476? They were 6th pick and I trust the scouts of the first 5 teams.)
I actually thought that 2337 was awesome, they scored A LOT of points in Elims. They deserved their spot. 3322 was also awesome, but are less well known, thus is the nature of the beast.
As to 33(us) popularity certainly had a lot to do with it. We were 49 in OPR using only Quals. However, if you added in Elims (when we actually mostly worked) we came up around 4th in OPR. No matter where we were placed, understand that we while we’re glad that people think we are the 6 best team right now, WE don’t think we were good enough and rest assured that we will be much much better come Troy in Week 5.
Just remember, it’s all in fun. Additionally, the more informed voters their are, the less it is a popularity contest.
Regards, Bryan
Edit: Also, Awesome job on the show guys! Your hard work is really apprechiated!
Yes, it is at least partially a popularity contest, it’s a public poll. Not everyone was able to watch every event nor do they study all of the statistics. To expect anything more of this, or to get angry about the results is pointless.
This is going to sound extremely bias but 3322 was missing one important element to the game the Bridges. I truly believe that 3322 could have taking number one seed if they just focused more on the bridges during the qualification matches. Just by looking at the data that is provided by FIRST from Kettering:
Best Hybrid: 3322
Best Teleop: 1504
Best Bridge: 33
Best Coop: 2337
Best All Around: 51
3322 had the best Hybrid mode hands done and their 6 ball auto in the eliminations was definitely a force to be reckoned with.
**Note that the data presented in the chart below is taken directly from Kettering Team Standing Page provided by FIRST (http://www2.usfirst.org/2012comp/Events/gg/rankings.html). With a slight adjustment for the Coop Points scaling by a factor of ten (CP*10=Adj. CP). The reason I used 10 is because a Coop Balance is as good as a 2-Bot balance.
