[KleinKid]

What is most apparent to me in FIRST is the unevenness of the teams. You have some teams that have 4 members and have always been small while you have many teams with a great background and support. The overall costs not just in money but manpower to get a team started and going is immense.


What could be done is a multi year multi tier system.

Year XXXX - Two games introduced with highly developed teams who currently make finals into the higher tier and the less developed and smaller teams in the lower tier.

The higher tier competes as normal with a more advanced game in the current system of 6 weeks of build time and several weeks of regionals and championships.

The lower tier competes as normal with a simpler game in the current system of 6 weeks of build time and several weeks of regionals. No championship or maybe smaller state championships. (Since these are teams with less resources travel to a far away city would be impracticable)

Year XXX1 - One game introduced

The higher tier competes as normal with a new game and all of the challenges of a short highly competitive season. Several weeks of regionals and national championship.

The lower tier competes in tier 1's previous game and has the entire year to develop for the next years game which is more advanced than normally possible now. With this the tier 1 teams can help tier 2 teams develop a game strategy and develop those ideas that they had to build from the previous year. Several weeks of regionals before the tier 1 regionals and several state championships.


With this more advanced teams with continue to have the challenge of what our current system allows while still giving less developed teams the chance to compete fairly without being completely overwhelmed in the build season.

Certain criteria would have to be established for what teams go into each tier. Perhaps something along the line of rookie through junior teams compete in the lower tier and then after those first 3 years have the chance to move up by getting to the semi finals at a tier 2 competition. Also if a team under performs (places in the bottom %15) in the top tier for several years they will be kicked back down to the lower tier.


As first grows this could expand into a 3 tier/year cycle where the tiers are even more separated. Maybe i'm just babbling nonsense but i'm just typing out my thoughts.