I have one question for EVERYBODY who is advocating an open build season. And I do mean EVERYBODY. Let's see who can answer it before they get to the answer.
Let's assume for a minute, that an FRC build season allows everyone an equal time to build their robot (give or take a few hours due to time zones, etc), as it is set up now. I think we can agree on that--setting aside the practice robots, which of course any team can build in the time between bag and ship, or build during build and play with in that timeframe. Now, let's extend the build season--no bagging, no tagging, just show up with your robot. You are in a Week 2 event--your first. You are competing against a team from Alaska, a team from Hawaii, and 2-3 teams from Mexico, and the event is in Arizona. Which of those teams is at a DISADVANTAGE in terms of time in an open build season, given that nobody bothers to build a practice robot when they have their competition robot in their ship to work on?
I would bet you even money that the team from Alaska and the team from Hawaii had to crate their robots and ship them before the Week 1 events just to make sure that they arrived at their destination on time. The Mexico teams would not need to ship, presumably (though they might choose to if the distance was far enough), so they have no disadvantage over travel time.
In other words, I think the real purpose of the bag deadline is to help the international/long-distance traveling teams, of which there are quite a few, have even time with the rest of us. Remember, they have to ship their robots. Most teams don't. Compete in HI or Israel instead of building a practice robot, and I think you'll agree that maybe it would be a good idea to have everybody at the event bag up their robot at about the same time.
So, here is a proposal: Extend the build deadline ONLY to the date that teams who ship their robots to Week 1, or whatever the first week someone will need to ship to an event is, will need to have their robots in the crate. FIRST presumably knows, or can be informed, of that sort of date, give or take a day in either direction. Now, I'd say that MI, MAR, and Israel would be exempt, except that MI and MAR would then proceed to kick the rest of our butts even worse than before (sorry, guys, I like the district concept, but could you ease off on the rest of us until we get our own?
), and I'd rather not have only one area exempt.
Speaking of which, someone asked about how those opposed to this change stood on the district model. I was not opposed to the district model, per se. I was opposed to certain elements, namely the secrecy and the fact that other areas who had wanted to do something like this for a while were not allowed to do something similar (now the former is a moot point and the latter is more of a "they're going that way, but foot-dragging is popular").
However, the removal of a bag day is something that I don't see happening. Not yet. Extended build time, or an access period, sure. Complete removal? Give it a couple of years after the extension and access period type of changes to see how that goes over--just like the districts took some time to get rolling, and now there are 2, with rumors of anywhere between 1 and 5 more being explored for 1-3 years down the road.