[MrJohnston]

A couple of thoughts...

1) Championship Caliber vs. Wait List:
I suspect that part of the reason we accept robots from a waitlist to fill out the fields is financial. It costs a significant amount of money to rent out a facility such as the Edwards Jones Dome for a week and those wait-listed teams really help the bottom line. I have experience running select baseball tournaments. If I were to rent and prepare a facility for a 24 team tournament, but only got 16 teams, I'd be in a mess financially. However, were I to fill the tournament with 24, I'd make a pretty profit. Thought FIRST is not a for-profit organization, the concept is the same. The last thing we want is for them to be forced to raise the price on everybody in the event that the tournament does not fill.

However, I agree that, in this case, it causes some challenges. Eight qualification matches is not nearly enough to allow teams to adequately separate themselves and puts them all much more at the mercy of schedule pairings. I would much rather see eight 50-team divisions, 10 qualifying matches and a quarter-final round at Einstein.

Further, I would not want to dissuade teams from coming who qualified with less competitive robots. If we have enough qualifying rounds, those who have truly great robots would rise to the top and those who don't would fall out of contention. A team with a weaker robot what really wants to compete either 1) will be inspired by all the great robotics around them to learn and be come better or 2) will learn real fast that they didn't belong in the first place and will see what great teams are really capable of accomplishing.


2) Competition vs. Gracious Professionalism
This is such a hard balance sometimes. Yes, this was the World Champsionships, which, by definition, is very competitive. We were all there to win. However, what sets FIRST aside is that Gracious Professionalism is the core value and being graciously professional is more important than winning a trophy. Sometimes, in our desires to excel, we forget this. Some things I witnessed personally, that I would rather see go differently:

* One team, when approached about alliances, blasting another's mentor and effectively demanding that the first not choose them.

* A team continuing to practice on the practice field and looking nothing short of awesome, but looking like garbage on the real field. Later, this team is seen talking to a top alliance about being a third pick.

* Teams being upset when being selected by the "wrong" team for alliance selections.

* Teams "showcasing" specific skills during the last qualification rounds in hopes of improving their chances at being selected - at the cost of the match and their alliance partners' chances. (Consider a team that loses the #8 seed because of such a loss, then never gets chosen for eliminations!)

* Teams in the stands yelling obscenities about referee's calls - and not being calmed by mentors.

* Teams saving seats when specifically asked not to. I saw several instances when kids could not watch their own robot compete because the they were not permitted to stand in teh aisles to watch matches and the 100 (or more!) empty seats were all being "saved" by other teams.