[PayneTrain]

^^I'm confused. How does moving to a system with less blue banner bids necessitate a larger CMP?

Here are some facts. At CMP 10 years ago, it was a free for all. A decade ago, there were 17 competitions in an entire season. Now there are more than 17 before we even leave Week 2.

Putting on a regional is like setting up a high-tech state fair, except there must be money and infrastructure in place to run every single one of them. In a tumultuous economy, the district system was born as a low-cost, high-volume alternative/more bang for your buck/higher efficiency.

Michigan engineered a competition structure that will be able to weather the future. We are running out of available venues, blowing incredible corporate sponsorships on these venues that could be funneled into teams, and the program is populating itself without restraint, leaving the unprepared to wander off and die 1 or 2 years after they are brought into the world.

Another fact: In a state where we had 5 new rookies, we lost 6 teams. No offense to any rookie teams or VAFIRST, but that is by no stretch or morphing of reality, an improvement.

The regional system has rookies dumping six thousand dollars to get trounced by these well-established powerhouses without any preparation. I'm not saying that preparation is building a robot as strong as these powerhouses, but mentors and students that do not quickly understand the values of FIRST. They won't take the concept of getting steamrolled after throwing all the money and work they could into their robot.

Enter the district system. It's more than just another way to play into CMP. It's a natural support system. People forget that while FiM has these "district competitions" these are not the "districts." Districts are the geographic divisions that are based on team concentration and location and encourage targeted growth and development of new teams while supporting fledgling teams. That'sthe district system.

I'm in favor of forming into geographic conferences (The Monongahela/Ohio River Valley Conference (upper WV, western PA, Ohio) The Capital Regional Conference (MD-DC-VA) FiNE, Southern Atlantic Coast Conference (NC/SC/GA) Gulf Coast, yadda yadda) and opt-in destination regionals (Hawaii, Dallas, Los Angeles, Chicago, New York, Israel, DC) that have double field play (HI/IS excluded) outside of districts that teams who don't go to CMP can play in.

TLDR: Districts are fun.