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...


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.

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.

My proposal...
 

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

4) (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.

5) 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 :)

Any comments.....

Well, I dont :p

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.

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

Ok, hope that helps.