I have a lengthy post regarding this topic already, but there's a couple things I still want to say.
The champions are champions now, and will remain so. Might as well make the best out of that situation. Team 4334 heartily congratulates the champions.
However, this was a world championship competition. The people who made the calls they did shifted the immediate blame from the FIRST to the teams in the eyes of the average spectator.
Imagine if at the Stanley Cup finals, there was a massive hole in the ice, that at times, detained half the players on the ice and kept them from moving at all. I sort of think they might stop the gameplay and fix the ice.
While everyone's gracious professionalism remained remarkably high on the floor considering what happened, it doesn't take away from this that it is completely unacceptable. I mean, if you want to break it down, the teams played a little under 20 matches at the championships, at a $5000 entry fee, we all paid $250 to get screwed by the field. I've already said that I'm not going to play the "well this would have happened if Einstein wasn't broken" game, because, well it's really not very gracious, but nonetheless I feel cheated out of an opportunity to show the world what we could do. The Maple Leaf Alliance had an amazing triple balance, and although I am biased because I was part of that alliance, I think we can all agree it was impressive nonetheless.
If you're interested, you can see my full post on what happened on Einstein here.
http://www.chiefdelphi.com/forums/sh...&postcount=182
Mac