[PayneTrain]

The primary motivation behind the district system was cutting the massive overhead of running three regionals in Michigan and instead truly operate only one regional and now 10 events that as a whole cost less than a regional and now supports nearly 200 teams... 200 mind-blowingly competitive teams chomping at the bit for the last four seasons.

Now the increased quality of the FRC product is being matched with the lower costs in MAR, and HINT HINT other states and regions will probably throwing their hat into the ring by the next season HINT HINT.

I have discussed this before at length, and barring an unfortunate missing external HDD and college coursework beating me down, I would have even more to talk about with respect to districts. This move by FIRST was not only to eliminate what I call the "Fastest Finger" competition for leftover CMP spots, but positions the league to move a qualification only via district->regional/"destination regional" tournaments within the next few years (I hope/think).

Ideally I think we could do something like this:

CMP representation would not be dissimilar to congressional representation, where a competing state/province/region of states/provinces are given the "standard six" spots guaranteed and the rest distributed based on team population. Under this format, the Michigan State Championship would ideally generate 26 at-large bids on top of the "standard six". I guess FIRST would not be too picky and would allow MSC to distribute the 26 spots however they choose: go down the final standings and pick the top 26, pick multiple SCA/EI/RAS awards, give a spot to everyone in elimination play, or whatever.
If the state of Virginia were to possibly go to a district system in 2014 for who knows why and this distribution system were used, VA would 6 spots on top of the standard six.

There are so many ways FIRST could navigate CMP to a purely-qualified-only event that I can't coherently spell out at 3am, but I do love the district system and what it could bring to the sport so I am always eager to talk about it (especially with people working for VirginiaFIRST) so it can be difficult to shut me up from espousing its benefits and necessity in what we will look back as the pre-district era instead of the modern era.