[Ekcrbe]

Picking 1-8, 1-8 gives not only the best teams an advantage, but it almost completely limits the "niche strategies" that some newer or smaller teams utilize effectively (i.e. a balancing/defensive specialist like 4294) by making the main strategy extremely dominant. Since teams that can carry the potentially poor random alliances in qualifications are usually offensive, those types of teams tend to seed higher and are more desirable for the 1st round of selections. A team that excels at one particular aspect of the game may not do well in qualifications, but could play a very valuable role with the right alliance during eliminations (as 4294 did at Kettering, being the last pick of the Alliance Selections). I think this is a prime example of how FIRST gets the point across that you don't have to be good at everything, but you have to find one job and perfect it.