[IKE]

I am not trying to be a jerk, but I would like to flip the discussion on its head for a moment.

If the championship is about inspriation of the un-inspired, and you decide that need for inspiration should surpass performance, then shouldn't all of the RCAs, EIs, and Event winners stay home? They already get it! They already had an inspiring experience at their regional, so they really shouldn't need further inspiration. Also any team with a WFFA mentor should not attend as surely they too have been inspired above average level. I would go so far as to say that the most inspirational championship would consist of those teams that have not yet played in any Elims in 2012. These are the teams in the most need of inspiration and thus the most deserving to attend the inspirational championship. With between 12 and 40 teams not making it into elims at an event, and some of those would be duplicates in the district system, with around 50 events, this would be on the order of 1,000 teams which is too many for a Championship event, so we could just allow first year teams, or teams that have not played in elims the last 2 years. This should be around 300-400 teams as many will not have raised funds with the intention of attending a championship as their going in assumption would be that they want to play in elims at their local regional.

I don't think the league would survive such a system.

Just so it is clear, I am not a robot performance guy only. I personally have been advocating a system that allows for more than just the winners to go on. I also would like to see some qualification points for teams that submit and meet the criteria for a chairman's award. I know way too many teams that do a lot of good stuff, but do not document it as they know "we will never win the RCA because team XYZ always does". This becomes a self fulfilling prophecy as no one competes against team XYZ. If every team (even hall of famers) had to at least complete the citeria for chairman's (just like there is a minimum criteria for a robot allowed allowed to compete) in order to get to advance to a championship, then you would see some serious chanes to the "Robot Competition".

I tend to think of the Championship events as more of a reward for executing the vision of FIRST than a lottery jockpot or an inspirational event in itself. Offering it as the reward is the inspiration for the pursuit of excellence. though I have always been more inspired by a career path that if you do well in school, get good grades, pick a useful degree, and do useful efforts than buying a mega-millions ticket.