Cherry picking some of Ivan's statements; I'm not trying to interrupt his flow & hope this doesn't do that.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Ivan Malik
Each team should always try and "sustain their excellence," but the larger system of FRC should not be designed so that the same teams can stay excellent.
There should be some sort of factor that destabilizes things.
In order for FIRST to achieve both its goals, of cultural change and establishing itself as a sport of the mind, there needs to be turnover of what teams are on top.
This destabilizing factor can be an official thing from FIRST in the form of a game element or something else, it can be an idea that a group of teams decides to do, it can be a culture shift among the entire community of the FRC, etc.
It really doesn't matter what it is, there just needs to be something that forces this turnover regularly.
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Gregor paraphrased Karthik; I'll paraphrase a Zen story I read years ago and probably don't remember correctly. If you have a shorter piece of string than your neighbor, the way to change the situation is to lengthen your piece of string, not try & shorten his.
I don't know how you can artificially make the "powerhouse" or "elite" or "whatever you want to call them" teams less of what they are. The only way to change them is for them to stop being themselves. There are pages of CD posts talking about this, so I'm not going to expound. I'll admit that I'm not a good out-of-the-box thinker, but I just don't see how FIRST putting anything artificial into the system is going to change these teams. They'll just figure out how to work around it.
AND...if you ARE able to find a way to force the kind of turnover you appear to think is healthy, I don't want it. I don't want to beat 1114 or 2056 or 469 or 67 or <insert the appropriate team here> on the competition field because FIRST made it harder for them than it did for me. I don't want to win Chairman's over 1108 (for anyone not familiar with KS teams, they've won something like 7 RCAs at various tournaments) because FIRST did something that gave them a harder set of standards. I want to get to their level and win because we EARNED it. There's no way I'm going to take
any satisfaction in a trophy that I got because I got to use both legs in the race and my opponent had to hop on one.