[EricH]

Originally Posted by Nemo

If you like the sports analogy, then what of wild cards? Event winners and RCA winners are basically division winners. FIRST could allow other teams in based on some criteria, and they would be wild cards. Sometimes wild cards are a great thing, particularly when the same division has more than one great team in the same year. Analogous situations happen in FIRST regional competition.

They do, on rare occasions. I can ONLY think of 2, and in both cases it was the Finalist alliance. Arizona 2004 and Silicon Valley 2008. In one case, the ref made a mistake; in the other, a team made it onto the field in between when the count started and the match started, giving the ref a tough call, which he passed on to the other alliance (who proceeded to take event Finalist in the subsequent match).