Winningest FRC team of all time??

FIRST General Forum
#21

Hi Adam Heard,

Wow! That’s really impressive. Safety is something that’s definitely overlooked in the workplace far too often and while it can be a pain to deal with regulations, trying to cut corners can lead to some real nasty accidents. The number one issue I tend to see is someone without the proper training trying to operate equipment!

I’m all for working quickly and getting the job done, but it’s never worth injuring yourself or others (though if you do, that’s how the local fire/EMS pay their rent!). Also, with these kids getting involved in electronics it’s really important to keep in mind how difficult it can be to understand the dangers associated with a near invisible threat. I’ve been the unfortunate witness of one or two particularly “bright” episodes that left everyone a little less than okay. Fortunately, that’s with pretty high power stuff and while the dangers aren’t as high with the stuff you guys are working on I’m sure you could still get a real good kick if you aren’t paying attention!

I’m glad to see that 1319 is taking safety so seriously and I looked them up on thebluealliance.com and saw they also win events fairly close by! This team’s on my radar now and I wish 'em the best.

Best Regards,
RM

#22

We went 10-0 in 2015… :wink:

-Mike

#23

Our safety award team must have been pretty good then this season. We won at the event 1319 competed at, and the head safety advisor said Best Presentation he saw in his 12 years of judging.:slight_smile:
Too bad our lead student graduated after 6 years in our program.

#24

That is an important factor in nearly any metric. Now find a way to ignore 2009 too.

#25

Aw thanks for the shout out! We have definitely taken safety seriously over the years and our students have developed a great program based on innovation and practice. ::safety::

We don’t always win at the regional level, as Glenn noted, but we’ve been consistent over the years and are so proud of our two world awards. We’ve seen some great safety programs across the country so each win is hard won and awesome. I’m honestly impressed at how much the general FIRST safety program has grown since 2005. There are some amazing safety programs out there!

#26

I agree that banners/event or banners/year may show the most efficient teams, but the title of this thread includes “OF ALL TIME”. By your metric, a 3 year team could kick butt for three years and win 4 banners per year and beat everyone else, but would they be the “Winningest FRC team of all time?” No.

For example, say a new NBA team is created next season, and they win more games than any other team. Their overall win/loss record is the best average out of every team. But are they the most “winningest NBA team of all time?” No. They may be the most dominant for that year, but “of all time” includes, well… all time.

Therefore, I stick by that 254 is the winningest FRC team of all time because they have won the most blue banners out of the entire history of FRC.

#27

The assumption you’re making is that “winningest” is defined as “the team that has the greatest number of wins”. I think it is extremely reasonable for someone to define “winningest” as “the team that wins the most often” or “the team that is most likely to win any given event”, which at this point is clearly 2056 based on their history of only having not won twice in the regular season.

Your arguments about “but what if some team only existed for a few years” are fairly moot here, because 2056 has finished its 11th season this year. Otherwise, this metric is useless, as only teams that have been around for more than 18 years could possibly compete with 254 / 67 / 71 / 111, and that’s not really challengeable.

#28

987 seems always left out of these debates.

It’s hard to pick a single winner… 67, 118, 254, 469, 987, 1114 and 2056 have all be killers in the modernish era. Going farther back 71 and 111 obviously get included.

One important questions to ask is what’s more important? Consistent regional/event wins or performance at champs (division and champs wins)?

If I had to pick a singular best as of 2017, it’s hard to not go with 254.

#29

This was really the crux of my argument, thanks :slight_smile: We aren’t talking about a professional sport here where most of the teams have been around for a long time. The age, nature, and history of growth of FIRST means that some teams have a significant benefit when it comes to longevity. Compare two teams. One could be in FIRST twice as long as the other and thus have twice as many wins… does that mean they’re “more winningest”? And then you could compare two teams that are the same age. One of those teams may win every regional they attend, but only attend 1 regional a year. The other may win half the regionals they attend, but attend 2 each year. Which one is “more winningest”?

The inequalities of team age and events attended per year make it very difficult to compare records between teams.

And I’ll note that I did suggest introducing some sort of minimum age limit to prevent young teams from being over stated before they had proved a history of high performance.

#30

If you are comparing the number of blue banners won I think it is fair to consider the number of teams at the events as well. If you think about it, at a 40 team event there is a team on the winning alliance that in theory wouldn’t even be in eliminations at a 60 team event with a similar distribution of robot capabilities.

(IE - If you assume the events have a similar median and standard deviation of robot capabilities and the teams do a good job ranking the robots - the second round of the 40 team event is the 60th to 40th percentile robots and one of those is going to be on the winning alliance. The 60 robot event has a draft that stops at the 60th percentile robot.)

That said - it is a High School Activity so my opinion is the winningest team is the one that inspires the most students to be all they can be.

#31

Coming from the context of sports, I always thought “winningest” meant “having the most all-time wins”, period, full stop, regardless of pretty much any other metric.

If you do an Internet search for “winningest programs”, every single article on the first page will be about which teams have the most all-time wins. This means that Ohio State University’s football program is higher on “winningest” lists than Boise State, even though the latter has a higher winning percentage, because OSU’s program started in 1890 and BSU’s started in 1932; thus, OSU has more wins.

Taking the “winningest” definition of sports, the winningest FRC program would be the one with either the most match wins or most event wins - to me it isn’t clear which one of these it is. Missing from the equation would be any attempt to reconcile the fact that some good teams are younger than others.

(Also, Michigan Football hasn’t been as good recently, so as a fan I’m glad they won a bunch of games in the early 1900s. Michigan has both the highest win total (winningest) and win percentage in college football :D)

#32

“Winningest” is a highly subjective metric. The most common interpretation observed in the thread is the most blue banners, or the highest banner/year rate. However, any team that sets out to change culture and ends up doing so may be interpreted as “winning” as well, as in perfectly meeting the goals of FIRST.

Success can be held to different metrics. Some teams view the goal of FRC to get to champs, some to build a robot and have fun, some to win on Einstein, some to share the experiences they’ve had and set out to change the world. All in all, the one who wins the most is society from the amazing things we can accomplish together in the grand alliance of life.

#33

The argument of the most winningest team of all time in my opinion is a mix of blue banners won and the time they have been around. Defining the most winningest team as the most blue banners is like saying Bill Russell is the GOAT because he has 11 rings, the most rings. It is isn’t fair to teams that didn’t have good alliances or hard competition, even teams that haven’t been around for that long.

That being said it’s hard to argue against 254 48 blue banners, the most, and 3 world championship wins, tied for 2nd most.

#34

Lots of good conversations on the topic.
Perhaps the title should be changed to include what people define as “Winningest.”

My personal favorite is Team 254.
Having been introduced to FRC by their rookie robot in our library at our school in Hawaii in 1999, we have had some sort of relationship with them, including Team 368 TKM.

The most impressive feat to me is that from their start in 1998 to present, they have always built one of the best robots for competition.
They switched schools, had several turnovers of key mentors, lost some key NASA sponsorship and shop space, but still manages to recruit the best mentors and alumni while building world-class robots.
Many other greats of the past have had their ups and downs, but this team hasnt had it yet.

Teams like 67, 987, 1114 and 2056 are close runner ups in terms of the consistency of running at an elite level throughout their entire history. Perhaps 2056 is the exception, but lets see what happens in 10 years or so. I dont believe they have lost any key people, where they had to adjust and rebuild.

#35

There will always be teams that dominate FRC in their respective regions but in different time eras. Fore example, one could say 71’s lasting 4 championship wins (1997, 2001, 2002, 2004) along with its 27 blue banners could make it the “Winningest FRC Team” while another could say 254 with their 48 blue banners and 3 championship wins (2011, 2014, 2017).

However, maybe we could assign teams ELO ratings for each season where each team would start with a base ELO of 1000. This could be used just for elimination matches and/or could include qualification matches. The system would add together each alliance’s total ELO and compare against the opposing alliance’s total ELO. The losing alliance has each team share an equal amount of lost ELO while the winning alliance would have each team share an equal amount of gained ELO. This would more accurately estimate a team’s success in a season as teams would lose less rating against tougher opponents and by the same token gain more rating against tougher opponents.

We could estimate a team’s total success as “Winningest FRC team of all time” by taking the average of every season’s ELO into a total all time ELO.

#36

There will always be teams that dominate FRC in their respective regions but in different time eras. Fore example, one could say 71’s lasting 4 championship wins (1997, 2001, 2002, 2004) along with its 27 blue banners could make it the “Winningest FRC Team” while another could say 254 with their 48 blue banners and 3 championship wins (2011, 2014, 2017).

However, maybe we could assign teams ELO ratings for each season where each team would start with a base ELO of 1000. This could be used just for elimination matches and/or could include qualification matches. The system would add together each alliance’s total ELO and compare against the opposing alliance’s total ELO. The losing alliance has each team share an equal amount of lost ELO while the winning alliance would have each team share an equal amount of gained ELO. This would more accurately estimate a team’s success in a season as teams would lose less rating against tougher opponents and by the same token gain more rating against tougher opponents.

We could estimate a team’s total success as “Winningest FRC team of all time” by taking the average of every season’s ELO into a total all time ELO. This would most likely/indefinetly still rank the powerhouse teams like 25, 27, 33, 67, 125, 118, 148, 180, 195, 217, 330, 359, 469, 610, 624, 971, 987, 1114, 1477, 1538, 1678, 1986, 2056, 2481, etc (so many others) to name the least still on top but in a more defined and orderly way.

#37

https://www.chiefdelphi.com/media/papers/3306

#38

Using that spreadsheet, if you take team’s average ELO since 2008, the list looks like this:

254
1114
2056
1678
118
148
987
971
1986
195
330
33
2481
2122
16
359
67
1806
4488

If you take team’s average ELO from the past 4 years, the list looks like this:

1114
2056
254
987
67
118
148
330
1986
469
33
1678
16
971
359
4488
624
111
525

In both lists, the top 3 spots are populated by 254, 1114, and 2056.
This would be a “winningest team” metric relative to match wins.

#39

ELO is designed to figure out who would win, but “winningest” is an intentionally naive statistic that measures who has won the most. This is like how FPI is a better measure of how good a football team actually is than wins, but again, we’re talking about an intentionally naive statistic.

I’d lean towards individual matches more than events because that’s the smallest individual unit. So I think somebody needs to do thousands of TBA API queries so we can figure out the answer.

#40

Or use the data dump repo :stuck_out_tongue: save them some bandwidth.