[chetznutz]

The veteran teams will remember that every year Dean gets up on the stage and says "It's not about the robots". Do you think he's talking to hear himself? After writing multiple letters to FIRST, attending forums for years, and hearing " it's not about the robots" I'm getting the message. In a game designed to not just make it improbable, but make it a penalty to score for the opposing alliance, part of the metric used to determine the top 8 is the losing alliances score. I would rather use the flip of a coin to decide between 4 or 5 teams with identical won - lost ratios. So back to the question " to allow or not multiple region/district champs " FIRST doesn't care what you decide. Personally I can't imagine watching American Idol or (UGH) Dancing with the stars if the contestants stood before the judges and were told that their performance was exceptional, but the team/person that competed before them didn't do well, so even though they performed admirably, they were eliminated along with the poorer performing team/person, because "it's not about the (insert talent here ) so we don't have to strive to be fair to the contestants" I wil not demean the Chairmans Award. It is the highest award that FIRST has, but that is not an excuse for having no concern for fairness in the design and intent of the contest that is the center of why mentors and students go to a championship. If you gave an award and no one attended is it truly worth anything. the grumpy old guy