[fuzzy1718]

PayneTrain -
While you are correct that MI is broken into physical land divisions, these are more about models of potential growth than a support system... From the perspective of the teams I have been around. I have no knowledge of the inner workings of FiM, so I cannot say how the district boundaries affect their decision making.

The average student in MI doesn't know that physical boundaries even exists, let alone what they are. Many mentors don't know what they are other than lines in one picture. They really have no affect on anything in the mindset of many in MI. They do determine one of the district events that teams must attend. (teams are required to go to one of the closest events, and then can sign up for any event of their choosing in the state. This is to prevent local teams from being forced to travel a long distance to both their events.)

As far as support systems go I will use the example of my former team from HS. While they are from northern Macomb county, they share a closer bond with teams in their immediate area, including those who are over the county line in another district, than those to their south who reside in the Macomb district. They also share a closer bond with those in a completely different district to the west.

Eric -
There is a simple solution, make everyone go to the same number of events...
If teams can attend as many events as they desire, I would assume that the current rules regarding what districts count towards points would remain the same as in MAR and FiM, being the first two count. Quite frankly I am not in support of any team going to more events than others, especially when points are on the line for some, but not for others. However, seeing as people will fight tooth and nail against this, the current rules do a nice job of sorting out the mess.

However I do not understand where the notion that there would be a rush for week one and the last week events comes from. How is this any different than under the regional structure? Do we see a rush to register for those events now?

Also, one of the benefits of going to the district model is more localized events. Travel is meant to be lessened and thus should not be a factor; The costs of going to the number of events required for points should be rolled into one lump sum rather than paying per event, this would eliminate the bigger budget advantage; also by adding a regional championship wouldn't there be an additional entrance fee to the teams, driving the cost to attend World's higher; and time is solved by the changing the schedule to a two day format as the district competitions are now.

(ignore the grammar of the last statement. I have reorganized 5 times and can't seem to get it as it should be.)

It is clear that there is no ideal solution for the "rest of the best" as you put it. There never will be as long as FIRST continues to support the policies that it currently does, in my opinion. However this is a discussion that has the tendency to start flame wars; so why ruin a nice thread such as this.

Ultimately the second tier leads to the same result as a regional does now, under the current rules of FiM... I relate to what I know best. Save for those who qualify for World's by being ranked.

Also this entire discussion is about the best way to win, it is not about any of the ideals of FIRST... the things that actually matter. I wonder how our ideas of the ideal system would change if they were the main things guiding this discussion. I shall have to re-evaluate the scenario from a different perspective now.