Quote:
Originally Posted by Oblarg
When you lose sight of this, you lose sight of the entire purpose of FRC. If you honestly think that your success in the tournament better matching your robot ability should rank higher on FIRST's list of priorities than allowing teams you deem "unfit" the opportunity to attend and compete in championships, then you do not understand FIRST, and need to fix your attitude. Shame on you.
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FIRST appears to believe in inspiration through competition. If this is the case, then Championships should be as competitive as teams are able to make it. Being at the mercy of the schedule after spending so much more time, effort and money to qualify and attend is uninspiring for everyone, it's just most obvious when known powerhouses get caught in it.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Oblarg
Now, please tell me how you could possibly read this in a way other than "we need to make sure that non-elite teams don't get in, because being paired with a non-elite team is harmful to the ranking of an elite team." He did not say "we need to restrict the number of teams that get in," he said "we have to make hard choices about who gets in." The sense of that quote is very clearly discriminatory as to team quality, not quantity.
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This is how: don't conflate "not Championship caliber" with your definition of elite. Yes, Daisy is elite. But the complaint isn't about not playing with elite teams, it's about not playing with teams that are on par with Worlds.
"...invitations to Championships get harder to come by, we need to start making hard choices about who gets in" is not a normative assertion. It's not an elitist attitude--it's not an attitude at all. It's simply true. At what point does inviting more teams to play fewer matches result in diminishing returns? How many people do you inspire pulling someone off the waitlist vs qualifying another wildcard team, versus even keeping it at 8+ matches? Whether we like it or not, we're coming up on the point that these decisions are non-negotiable.