[Chris Nowak]

plus, with the permanent pairings, anything can go wrong to prevent people from going to a competition. Also, what would happen if only one team prequalified for nats from previous years? Or, if both teams qualified but only one could get the funds to go? It would also be hard for FIRST to pair up teams that were going to the same regionals. They would run into odd numbers everywhere.

As far as the changes I think will happen, I think that we're going to see some element of play that is not a robot which is entirely unpredictable, or some form of play that could easily damage robots(like climbing or something). I don't think we'll have footballs, but the fact that they say they're majorly changing it leads me to believe there won't be balls. Maybe there will be no ball like thing and there will only be large things to push around like the goals from last year.