Wild Card Rules Interpretation

FIRST General Forum
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So it’s pretty clear that there’s been some confusion on how wild cards work this year. I’m here to provide an interpretation that adds to the confusion. Here are the rules for wild cards, as stated on the Championship Eligibility Page:

If a team at a Regional earned a FIRST Championship spot prior to the Regional and then wins the Chairman’s Award, Engineering Inspiration Award, or is the Winning Alliance’s Captain or 1st Pick at that Regional or is already a Pre-Qualifying team, it generates a Wild Card, i.e. a FIRST Championship Merit-Based slot that is offered to another team. Teams that receive a FIRST Championship slot via a Priority or Open Waitlist do not generate Wild Cards.

Any team earning 2 qualifying spots at a single Regional generates 1 Wild Card.

So, this already seems confusing enough, right? Wrong. Let’s take team 1816 as an example. They are a recent Hall of Fame team, so they are pre-qualified for champs. So, let’s look at their first event and see how the wild card rules apply to them. Unfortunately, they didn’t earn any awards that would qualify them for champs at this regional. However, the wildcard rules may still apply. They satisfy this condition:

If a team at a Regional earned a FIRST Championship spot prior to the Regional

by pre-qualifying, and this condition:

and then wins the Chairman’s Award, Engineering Inspiration Award, or is the Winning Alliance’s Captain or 1st Pick at that Regional or is already a Pre-Qualifying team

also by pre-qualifying, therefore they should:

generates a Wild Card, i.e. a FIRST Championship Merit-Based slot that is offered to another team

So, simply by attending an event, 1816 should generate a wild card. But, what if pre-qualifying doesn’t count as “earning a spot”? Let’s take a look at their next event. Here, they won the Engineering Inspiration award (congrats!). However, they actually don’t satisfy either this condition:

If a team at a Regional earned a FIRST Championship spot prior to the Regional

or this condition:

Any team earning 2 qualifying spots at a single Regional generates 1 Wild Card

So, how do they generate a wild card? It actually looks like they shouldn’t, and actually just earn a spot to go to champs. However, the first scenario would then play out at any subsequent events they attend, causing them to generate wild cards at any regional they simply attend.

I think these rules leave quite a few open questions. I’m 100% sure this is not the way FIRST is running wild cards, so what is the actual procedure?

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If a team at a Regional earned a FIRST Championship spot prior to the Regional and then wins the Chairman’s Award, Engineering Inspiration Award, or is the Winning Alliance’s Captain or 1st Pick at that Regional or is already a Pre-Qualifying team, it generates a Wild Card, i.e. a FIRST Championship Merit-Based slot that is offered to another team. Teams that receive a FIRST Championship slot via a Priority or Open Waitlist do not generate Wild Cards.

Any team earning 2 qualifying spots at a single Regional generates 1 Wild Card.

This seems fairly cut and dry to me, and matches how I’ve seen it applied at events.

To summarize, in order to generate a wildcard, you must:

  1. be one of the teams that would otherwise earn a bid at that event (EI, Chairman’s, 1 Captain or their first pick).
  2. have previously qualified (whether that’s from earning a bid at a previous event or prequalifying in some way, i.e. as a HoF team)
  3. OR have earned 2 bids at the same event (i.e. winner and EI)
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Also, if this isn’t CD in a nutshell…

4 Likes
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You’re definitely correct, your interpretation is how the rules actually are run, I’m simply talking about how the rules are written. I think we’re in agreement on points 2 and 3 in your list, I just have an issue with point 1. If you look at this sentence:

and then wins the Chairman’s Award, Engineering Inspiration Award, or is the Winning Alliance’s Captain or 1st Pick at that Regional or is already a Pre-Qualifying team

it would appear that being a pre-qualifying team somehow is also part of that list in point 1, which absolutely should not be the case, and is definitely not how the rules have been applied. If this is true, shouldn’t any pre-qualifying team simply generate a wild card whenever they attend a regional, as they have satisfied points 1 and 2?

Obviously not, but that’s what the rules say.

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It’s really not this confusing… 1816 was a pre qualified team to the championship and then won EI at their last event so they generated a wild card spot! It’s that simple. Just like how 1678 already had earned their spot for the championship before Silicon Valley they won two qualifying awards there, which generated two wildcards. 4481 won two qualifying awards at South Florida week 1, but that will on generate one wildcard spot.

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That is definitely how the rules are supposed to be work, but how they’re written and how they’re supposed to work do not agree at all.

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Yeah it could be worded better but it says it right in the rule book.

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