[Allison K]

Preface: This is opinion ought to be taken with a grain of salt, as I've been in Michigan since the dawn of districts and am most likely suffering from resistance-to-change syndrome (rather prevalent at times here on CD).

I question the points for rookies and second year teams. As noted both earlier in this thread and in many other threads, the mark of a good system is not how it ranks the very top teams, but how it ranks teams at the cutoff. 10 points is a pretty big boost at that level. Michigan is currently sitting at 49 rookies, so we are infusing at least 490 points into the system before the season even starts (not counting the bonus for second year teams). I understand that it's important to keep rookies and second year teams inspired and coming back, but bonus points just on team age are sending them to states at the expense of some other team who has also worked hard, and quite possibly hasn't been to states in four years or more. I have stats I'll pull up later about the number of veteran teams in Michigan who either have never been to states, or haven't been in the past four years.

I'm glad that EI is worth points now, as previously it was neither worth points nor was it worth a bid.

It'll be interesting to see how the Chairman's auto bid affects the invite list for states. Barring a change in venue, the MI District Champs have capacity for 64 teams, so 20% of the teams there will be attending on an auto bid (13/64).

Overall it seems like the changes are somewhat diluting the value of robot performance in favor of cultural factors. Not necessarily good or bad, just an observation.

Allison