QotW [11-09-02]: Championship Event qualification...

FIRST Rumor Mill
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*Originally posted by Andy Baker *
**
John is talking about a different thing entirely. “12 year teams” are the teams who have been involved in it every year since FIRST started in 1992.
Last year, there was a big debate about if these teams should automatically be qualified for the Championships. Many people disagreed that these teams should get this exemption, but FIRST again granted this exemption for 2003.
**

Ahhh, now I get it.
I thought it was about the chairman’s award focus on year round programs.
I think your 12 year teams should get the exemption…
And so should year round program teams :smiley: .

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How DO you get recognized as year round? And why should that make an exemption? I’m sure many teams will claim to be year round FIRST teams since it takes all year to fund raise the money for the registration. If FIRST thinks they are a very active year round team I am sure they will offer the Chairman’s Award.

I’ll stick to my guns- the Championship should be for teams who earn the slot in the current year by either winning a place through competition or being awarded a technical award for design.

Animation is a great thing but it has little to do with building a viable competitive robot. I don’t think that should warrant a spot at the Championships. Sorry.

As for a team being 12 years old, or 13, or 14 or whatever. It is nice to recognize them on their anniversary but to forever roll out the red carpet? Come on. What about the teams who came in in the second year? or third year? I can think of some 2-3 year teams with terrific programs who would deserve equal recognition. The 12 year teams listed are all great teams but I hope they have great enough programs to stand on their merits rather than need a free ride.

Let the competition decide who goes to the Championships. It is the fairest way and least subjective. We can still all be friends and feel good about each other. And the regionals can be the fun events they have always been.

Don’t hate me now!!

WC
:cool:

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*Originally posted by Wayne C. *
**How DO you get recognized as year round? And why should that make an exemption? I’m sure many teams will claim to be year round FIRST teams since it takes all year to fund raise the money for the registration. **

Huh. Our year round program is that we meet 3xs a week, all our meetings our open house to the public, we’re working on subsystems and other stuff, not much fundraising. Hope to have year round robotics’ curriculum soon. Why an exemption (and do you mean exception?), cuz FIRST in the Chairman’s Award seems to want to encourage year round activities. It’s not just about a winning robot.

*Animation is a great thing but it has little to do with building a viable competitive robot. *

We’ve never competed in animation, so I don’t know. Is there a national animation award?

The 12 year teams listed are all great teams but I hope they have great enough programs to stand on their merits rather than need a free ride.

Mmmm…recognizing them on anniversaries sounds right to me.

Let the competition decide who goes to the Championships. It is the fairest way and least subjective. We can still all be friends and feel good about each other. And the regionals can be the fun events they have always been.

I’d still like to see some teams who haven’t won have the opportunity to enrich and enjoy the nationals.

Don’t hate me now!!*

Nah. I think there’s a lot of tolerance for loose screws.

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*Originally posted by JVN *
**

Why animation winners?
What about the 12-year teams?
If making a competitive event is your primary concern, wouldn’t it be better to have all current year technical award winners? This would ensure that the most interesting/well made/innovative/technically advanced bots would be at “the championship”
I prefer the “nationals” mentality, not the “championship” mentality.

This would make for a more competitive competition, but would it truly be a better one? It all depends on your FIRST philosophy.
**

Bingo.

If FIRST wants to move toward a truly competitive format, that qualification for a Championship event needs to occur through similarly competitive regionals. Grandfathering in teams that are old, or have won other awards, or have experienced past success doesn’t nurture this competitive atmosphere. Instead, it rewards commitment.

This may or may not be a bad thing, again, depending on how you view FIRST.

I, too, would much rather see Nationals as an exhibition rather than a full-fledged battle to see who’s best. Who’s best, in reality, is of very little consequence. In truth, I can’t remember the entirety of the alliance that won last year’s Championship, let alone in prior years. For me, it’s unimportant as the past four years have been very, very rewarding for me and I haven’t won a single regional or technical award or Chairman’s award or anything else. 810 does have, however, two Highest Seeded Rookie awards and a Rookie All-Star. But, in the grand scheme of things, those seem to be ‘small’ awards.

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I used to compete, or try to, in flying model sailplanes. The Academy of Model Aeronautics has an interesting system for choosing who represents this country at international competitions while still having an event called “Nationals” or Nats.

Basically they have two separate competitions. If you want to compete internationally, then you go to special meets that are flown to internationally recognized rules. These are put on by various groups around the country who have shown they are qualified to do so. That is, they have the required equipment and personel who understand how to use it. You qualify at these meets for the final competition that is held a different place each year. The winners get the priviledge of paying their own way to Europe or someplace to represent the US at the World competition.

For those of us with merely ordinary ability that can’t see thermals from the ground, there’s Nats. Which is basically an excuse for people from all over the country to get together and swap stories about airplanes while pretending to compete. The only qualification is that your airplane meets the rules for the event you’re flying, and that you signed up quick enough.

There is some prestige here in the US to winning Nats, but very often the best fliers don’t attend, and most everybody knows it. In fact, in model sailplanes there has only been one guy who was both US National and World Champion at the same time.

Maybe we could have a similar system with Regionals leading to a Championship, but also having a National competition for anybody that wants to show up and has the money to do so. Maybe have the Nationals during the summer and more like a big off-season event.

just my $0.02

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*Originally posted by ChrisH *
**Maybe we could have a similar system with Regionals leading to a Championship, but also having a National competition for anybody that wants to show up and has the money to do so. Maybe have the Nationals during the summer and more like a big off-season event.
**

Sounds great!

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As FIRST growing larger and larger, suddenly we can’t get every team across the country into a little high school gym anymore like we did 11 years ago. Ever since then, National which is now known as the Championship event (I will be using “C.E.” from now on), have grown in size and experience in terms of an event learning and trying new things every year. When FIRST first limited how many teams could attend Nats, we knew it will never be the same anymore.

Seems like there are two things people want out of the C.E.: a competition to determine the true Champion of the game, or a social gathering event where people see every other FIRST participant under the same roof and share their experience, knowledge, and robot, while competing in this event TOGETHER as a single group…

…

So, let me ask you this: What’s more important to you? A truly competitive format, or a big social experience with every one else? Or, maybe it’s something else beside these? And, what do you hope to get out of C.E.?

Right now, I am not asking you guys to say which one is better. I just want to know, which you like more. No need to think about it too much… Just simple answers telling us, which format you want the C.E. to be, and what you want to get out of it.

I know people who want to go to Championship event just for the chance to be #1, while others are there to meet people and don’t even hang out with their own team… There are truly many different people in the competition, and Nats was the perfect opportunity to see that. So, I know there are a lot of people with different opinions.

Please, do tell us what you think. Only a hand full of posting replies, and so much more readers out there who haven’t said anything.

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*Originally posted by jk2005 *
**NO odd even stuf because than it isn’t really fair to all the even rookie teams in the case of this year. **

Having been on both sides of the coin in this debate at one point or another, I’m going to stay out of it as much as I can. However, based on what I have quoted above, many of you can probably aready guess what it is I’m going to write here.

Basically, the reason the odd/even stuck around this year was for fairness - i.e. toward all those odd teams that threw up their arms last year when they found out that because they were not an even-numbered team, they had to work harder to compete in the championship. FIRST already knows about the discussions held here and elsewhere about teams’ reactions to the whole odd/even qualification system(it was brought up at the team forum, if I remember correctly), and I would not be surprised if you saw a change in 2004. But for this year, I wouldn’t count on it…

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So what matters more?

ACreating a dominant robot and winning the national championship?

BBeing a solid citizen of FIRST. Promoting the values of FIRST to the community, your school and to other teams and winning the chairman’s award?

C. Going to the nationals to go hang out a DIsneyworld?

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I was under the impression the limitation on odd teams last year was because of limitations imposed by being at Disney. We are an even team, which meant we got a free ride to Epcot (even though we qualified off points anyway). I felt bad for all the odd numbered teams that didn’t get to go. Especially for their seniors, who had to miss out on what probably would have been their best memory of high school. Now it comes around this year, and we are at a new location for Nationals. If this location is capable of handling all the teams, we should we limit them? I realize the teams that got locked out of Nationals last year would feel it’s unfair, and it would be. But, to use a cliche’ , two wrongs don’t make a right. I would hope the odd numbered teams would be mature enough to realize that life doesn’t always have to be fair. Why should you wish misfortune unto all the even teams just because you had to suffer it. I realize this sounds self-serving coming from an even numbered team member, but it needs to be said. If there is no logistical reason this year to perpuate the odd/even rule, why should we. This will be my forth year in robotics and I want to go to Nationals and compete against everyone.

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*Originally posted by Mark Hamilton *
**If this location is capable of handling all the teams, we should we limit them? **

The limitation on the number of teams was resources rather than how big the space was. Well, I guess it was both… But one main reason for limiting the number of teams is logistic. It is very hard running an event with ALL the FIRST teams even with enough space.

FIRST will need a lot of staff, lots of playing field, and lots of volunteer. Last year they were forced to have 4 field simply because they don’t have enough staffs. Or else they wouldn’t have done the whole switching from field to field for the divisions. With only 4 fields, there’s no way to fit in any more teams if you still want a certain amount of qualification rounds done in the friday/saturday morning period.

Money is always an issue. Its costing enough to run the championship event as it is…

*Originally posted by Mark Hamilton *
**I realize the teams that got locked out of Nationals last year would feel it’s unfair, and it would be. But, to use a cliche’ , two wrongs don’t make a right. I would hope the odd numbered teams would be mature enough to realize that life doesn’t always have to be fair. **

I do see your point about this… If we have unlimited space at Nats, should we force even teams out of it just to be “fair”? Odd teams get to go anyway, and I think they would want to see the even teams going too. I think teams will be side if they see someone can’t go, instead of thinking what happened the pevious year. But you never know. Some teams will still say its unfair that they couldn’t go last year.

This is one of the things where FIRST just can’t possibly make everyone happy. I am sure they are doing everything possible to fit in everyone, but its just impossible to do so. Hence the whole qualification process.

Maybe teams could understand this better if its a purely competitive process.

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*Originally posted by Mark Hamilton *
I was under the impression the limitation on odd teams last year was because of limitations imposed by being at Disney…Now it comes around this year, and we are at a new location for Nationals. If this location is capable of handling all the teams, we should we limit them?

The problem with recinding the qualification rule is that eventually, the competition will outgrow any site that we can find for it, if we always allow every team who can afford to attend to do so. So, while it may be the case that the new site, wherever it may be, could support having more teams than WDW could, I feel that the qualification process should stay, possibly increasing the number of slots available if the site allows. Personally, I would rather have a little unused space at the Championship than have an “on again, off again” qualification system as the Championship location and # of teams required it.

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  1. pick a number of teams that can be reasonably be accomodated at various locations around the country ( this assumes a moving championship like the superbowl ) and the number must also make the number of qualification rounds for each team come out even(everyone has say 6 qualifying matches). This defines the number of teams which attend the championship.

  2. Institute a national ranking of teams based on points.

  3. points come from the following(in no particular order):

a) winning a regional
b) winning the championship
c) chairmans award (regional and national)
d) winning awards
e) winning animation competition
f) winning a division in the regional
g) winning 2nd place at the regionals,nationals,divisions

  1. (heres the real meat of my proposal) Every year every team starts out with 33% of last years accumulated points. This makes previous accomplishments influence the qualification, but does not lead to stagnation in the team mix at the championship.

Think about it, eventually, if you perminently qualify by winning certain events, those teams wil allways be there. This will lead to the same teams attending every year. A ‘clique’ develops and an ‘were going no matter how we do’ mentality may be created.

I think this will make every team work harder and even the playing field every year, especially for newer teams.

  1. Rank order the teams and select the X highest based on the number of teams determined in part 1.

This has several advantages:

  1. No teams can become complacent
  2. Newer teams have a greater possibility of attending
  3. The strongest teams from this and last year will attend
  4. No ‘cliques’
  5. Moving the location will give teams a variety of things to do and see.
  6. The location can be planned years in advance (like the superbowl) since the size of the event is fixed.
  7. The event will run smoother since every team will know the number and time of the matches before hand since they will be defined based on your position in the ranking and not randomly.
  8. I like it :slight_smile:

Any comments…

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Well, I dont :stuck_out_tongue:

Anyway (the new JospehM phrase),

I see two big problems still.

1- We still have the Nats at various locations around the US. The problem with that isn’t the clique thing, but dissapointment. Not many places can hold 10,000 kids for a week and still function as a city without disapointing them dearly. Only 3 places can do that

-WDW
-DL
-Vegas

These places have an already high amount of visitors that go and all have ample hotel rooms.

As for disapointment, what if one team can only go every few years, and it’s the one year that FIRST ‘set us up the bomb’? They go, transporation is a nightmare, nothing to do, etc. At WDW, everything is prepacaged and the same thing can be accepted year after year.

It dosn’t matter if Tom Morrow from Boise, Idaho wants it to be in his home town because it’s go hotel rooms and SURPRISE it’s IN HIS HOMETOWN!

2- The system introduce, although lowering the possiblity of some teams always attending the Nats, the problem is that it still has the great possiblity of good teams going every year, because like money, once you find out how to make lots of it, it comes naturaly.

3- Ok, I only said two, but this is also important.

Romaning regonals or whatever you said in the first one.

The things still remains that school districts need to know in advace of where they want to go. With your poroposal, (if I read it correctly), says that a playoff type round will happen around the US. But because of the school boards, travel arrangements, and other things, most teams won’t be able to make it.

Hope my slightly more clear version helps.

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What? I didn’t catch the train of thought.

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Ok, hope that helps.

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