[Boe]

Originally Posted by Jon Stratis

Yes, having so many teams make it from a district that the championship is worthless is a problem... but perhaps more of a problem is for the areas that aren't districts.

Minnesota, for example, is probably going to have about 200 teams next year. As a state, we have 4 regionals... which means 24 slots at champs. Sure, a few teams travel to out of state regionals, but even more teams from out of state come to our regionals and win slots. What it ends up meaning is that, as a state, the number of teams we send to champs is essentially a constant, and not comparable to the number districts send, as a proportion to FIRST population. We don't grow as champs grows - if we want more MN teams to make it to champs, we have to hold more events. The same isn't true for the districts, which creates, in my opinion, a severe imbalance across FIRST.

FIRST needs to come up with a system whereby they can support both the district and regional model while allowing proportional representation from every distinct area. Picture something like drawing up district lines across all of FIRST for Champs participation, but the method of entry for each individual region could be different - The district model could use the point system with a district championship, while the regional model could pull X teams from each regional, based on the number of teams needed for that area (with each area designed to have a minimum of 6 teams attending). For the regional, you could use a point system for the event, or base it on awards, or whatever.

Just to add some numbers to this:
MN Teams in 2014: 186
FRC Teams in 2014: 2707

Percentage of FRC teams from MN: 6.87%
Number of slots if represented at champs by percentage: 27.5
Current in state slots available: 24
Percentage of MN teams at champs if all slots won by MN teams: 6%

2014:
24 slots available, 6 slots won by non-MN teams
2 MN teams double qualified (one of them providing a wildcard slot to another MN team)
Slots won by MN teams: 18
Slots used by MN teams: 17
Percentage of champs teams who are from MN: 4.25%

The percentages currently aren't that far off, but as MN grows it will become farther and farther away from equal representation if more slots aren't available to MN teams. Of course there are two other regionals frequented by MN teams that are available but for the most part MN brings in more out of state teams then we send to other states.

I may go through at some point and run the numbers for 2013 as well if I get the chance.