[Cory]

All the speculation about why there are real fields in the pits is basically unfounded, but no matter the reason it comes down to this for me:

FRC is FIRST's marquee event. I appreciate that FTC and FLL kids put a ton of work into their respective events, but if FIRST wants to be big time, be on major television networks and get the kind of exposure real sports get, they need to have their marquee program front and center. ESPN is not going to waste half a second thinking about putting some boring FTC bots on live (or tape delayed) TV.

So essentially regardless of the reason for the move of 2 fields, FIRST should have done whatever it took, including the removal of FTC/FLL from the dome entirely, to keep all 4 divisions in the dome.

$0.02