It's the easy way out to hate on organizations like the Yankees or the Redwings or the Patriots. It’s a much harder thing to put in the work and build an organization that is capable of being contenders year after year after year.
To get away from the Sports if you go back and read this thread the "Power House" teams weren’t born into it. They built what they have overtime, I was a ThunderChicken in 2002 when we took a chance on a Crazy Transmission that required a can of circuit chiller after every match so we didn't melt the copper in the motors (my bad on the Ozone layer) Then in 2003 our strategy was right on for the first 15 seconds and then we ran out of a plan, but from all this our team learned our organization evolved we took a look at teams that were winning Hammond, Wildstang, Bomb Squad and asked them what they did. Was there Jealousy back then? Yup, a "man I wish we could just go out and dictate the match, I wish our robot worked every match. Their mentors obviously finished work on the mars probe with enough time to design that whole robot…."
Teenagers take allot at face value and even with Google still don’t find out all the facts. It’s part of being young and impressionable…mentors 
The team I mentor now is a third year who looks at the "power house" teams as targets. How do they recruit? How do they do their fund raising? How are they structured? How do we get them to pick us? How do we beat them? How do we beat them next year? What do we have to do now to lock up Chairman’s in 2015?
There allot of questions and ~2000 answers to each one, as each team dose their own thing. The really cool thing about FIRST is its transparency and the "Power House" teams give out more information and recourses than most.
The key is evolution, if your team is better this year than last, that’s good. Personal growth is part of what FIRST dose, but don’t think the “Power House” Teams are sitting back, 67 doesn’t win 2 in a row by sitting back on a good year and coasting you know their developing new tricks to put in their magic bots.