A few things crossed my mind in reading through the latest posts in this thread.
Yes every team should have the opportunity to attend championships... it is an amazing and awe inspiring event. It somehow gets bigger and crazier every year. But let me add a perspective... years ago, when I founded 1511, Rookie teams were not allowed to pre-register. I decided very early on with everything I had that I wanted my kids to see the Championships. So I scraped together funds, we did a ton of fundraising, I booked crazy cheap hotels, and we registered ourselves for 3 regionals. We would thus have 6 chances at getting a ticket to the big show - 3 RAS, and 3 Winners slots. By the end of the 3rd event our robot was beat to heck, but we had in our hands an RAS and a Regional Championship ticket... two tickets for one little rookie team!
If you are 100% committed to a goal, you can find ways to attain it. Go to multiple regionals, pick events that are "easier" to win, make your team a Chairmans or EI caliber team. These are all things that you have control over - IF YOU WANT IT BAD ENOUGH. I'm in 100% agreement that its in all of our best interests for each and every student in the program to see the amazing event that is championships. But the time has come that we can no longer hand out those golden tickets... we need to be like Charlie (who wanted a ticket to the chocolate factory) and find every possible way to get our OWN golden tickets.
As for some of the discussion on the numbers and how are we going to fit everyone in the future, I think this wild-card system is a good filler as FIRST builds towards its future plans. From what I know, with the potential of NE Districts coming online, there have been some discussions of FIRST's future plans.
Slides 7 & 8 in the presentation on the NE FIRST website give an idea of what the future might look like.
I personally would hate to see FRC have to go the route of FTC where only the alliance captains get to go (all 3 teams often play such a crucial role in deciding the winning alliance), but if we keep up the growth and expansion, even more "widdling down" of the pack will have to happen.
But as with all changes, we will all find a way to manage. As many have said, find a way to rise up with the great teams, and we will make FRC stronger as a whole.