[thefro526]

Originally Posted by DonRotolo

You know, I asked Ed Petrillo about that, too, and I was told that a HoF team uses up a spot when they win at their district CMP, but not if they do not win there. I got the impression that their winning at a regional would not affect the number of district slots, but I may be wrong there.

Don, this has been my understanding as well, that should an HoF/OgS/WC win their District Championship, they will be 'awarded' one of the spots allotted for winners of that event.

Now, as far as what those teams do at outside events, I'm under the impression that they're treated exactly as anyone else - and the way the wild card system worked in 2013 also backs this up.

District Teams do not earn points for their actions at any Regionals they may attend, but are still eligible for Team awards at those events, and any benefits that may go along with winning those awards, such as earning their way to the FIRST Championship. However, if a District Team does earn a slot at the FIRST Championship while attending a Regional event, that slot does count against the total Championship allocation the District is receiving for the season.

According to the verbiage there, any team from a district system that earns a Championship spot at an outside event will 'remove' that spot from their District's count. Without being told specifically otherwise, I'm left to believe that this will hold true for 'historic' qualifiers as well, especially considering the way the wildcard system worked in regards to these teams last year.

Originally Posted by FRC Blog 9/21/2012

If a team who wins a Regional in 2013 – in other words, if a team who is a member of the Winning Alliance – has already qualified for Championship at an earlier Regional in 2013, a ‘Wild Card’ slot is created at the Regional which they just won.

Note that only performance in the 2013 FRC season is considered in creating and awarding Wild Card slots. Championship status based on pre-qualification (Original and Sustaining Teams, Hall of Fame Teams, 2012 FIRST Championship Winners, etc.) has no bearing on this system.

Again, the wildcard excerpt is from last year's rules, so it may be changed this year, although I doubt that it'll change all that much.

The real shame here is that it puts a lot of teams in a bad spot here, regardless of their status of being a 'historic qualifier'. It seems that with the way that things are moving, most teams are forced to make a 'damned if you do, damned if you don't decision' in regards to competing outside of their District.

It seems that a lot of what we're beginning to talk about, specifically Championship Spots, and Advancing to the the next 'level' of play, are all the growing pains that we're experiencing as we're crossing the threshold where the traditional Championship Qualification Methods no longer work. Just playing the numbers game here, but as of right now, the qualification spots (traditional) break down something like this: ~100 Teams From the (4) District Systems, ~330 Teams From Traditional Regionals (6 Teams @ ~55 Events?), ~20-25 Historic Qualifiers for a total of 450 Teams, Maximum... Obviously, this math can't work (the Championship would be far too big) so it seems like someone, somewhere, is counting on teams making spots disappear either by 'double qualifying' or 're-qualifying'. In the case of historic qualifiers, it may be that we need to regard this as more of a safety net for an off year rather than a 'defacto' qualification.