[DampRobot]

Maybe meccanums are less popular in NorCal, but I didn't have to make a decision about picking a team with meccanums all that often.

(The following is about how I helped choose picks for 100, so don't read anything about 971 into my statements.)

For first round picks (if you are in that position, we were only there once when I was helping choose our picks), it's often fairly obvious who the next best team is, or if not, it's a choice between two teams. Usually, the teams who are picking from the top 8 have done their homework, and base their picks off objective statistics at least in part. Most teams that have a good shot at getting picked first have already chosen not to use meccanums, so it's usually not an issue. But, if I was in the position of picking first, and there was a team that was clearly better than anyone else available who ran meccanums, I would pick them.

Second picks are a lot harder, because there's a larger pool of teams that it might make sense to pick, and frankly most of the teams left over really aren't that good. Of course, it depends on the game, but in my experience, you're looking for a team that has a strong drivetrain and knows how to drive it, and if possible can hit auto and help with the endgame. If there's a team with a reasonably well built WCD and good drivers left by the time that we can pick them, we'll go for them 4/5 times. Offensive ability (which meccanum bots may or may not possess) is secondary, as the captain and 1st pick will likely be doing essentially all of the scoring. You want a good defensive team for your second pick, and for whatever reason, in my experience a well built WCD works best for that.

I don't think there's some vast conspiracy to never ever pick meccanum bots, but I do think (from being there in the past) that given a few roughly equivalent robots, teams will usually pick tank drives over meccanum drives. Going meccanum is usually a decision based on coolness, and teams with meccanums are often kind of wild cards. It often just feels safer to pick a team without diagonal rollers on their wheels.