That's a good summary Norm.
One of the programs that helped grow teams in the 2009-2011 range was the Texas High School Project. There isn't much information online about it but this
word doc sums up the program pretty well. Basically it gave schools about $18,000 over two years.
Does anyone have a list of teams that were founded using this money and how many are still around? From the little I know, not many of teams stuck around. A quick search through the
team358 database says that 18 teams had "Texas High School Project" as one of their sponsors and are no longer competing as of 2014. Many of the schools were supported by both THSP and JCPenny.
After the poor retention rates that we saw for so many years, I know a lot of veteran Texas teams/mentors that shy away from actively encouraging schools to start FRC teams without some experience with a smaller competition 1st. There are so many other options (FTC/VEX/BEST/Botball/MATE/etc.) to allow schools to get into competition robotics that don't have the costs and drop out rates of an FRC team. I know whenever possible I try to convince teams to take a year and really watch a full season before doing FRC. It's so much easier to start a program when you have some idea of what it actually takes than starting blind just because someone is willing to pay your registration fee.
I would love to have Texas rookies competing at a level where they are all in contention for Rookie All Star. We do a ton of work to help prepare rookie teams for the season and work with them during the season but even with that help many of them fold after a year or two. The teams that do the best are those that either have experienced mentors or FRC alumni helping to run their programs but that's not an easy thing to get for a lot of the teams.
From a school perspective I can also see how it would make more sense to compete in several smaller programs. You can have more teams and compete more often where in FRC you may only be able to compete once per year. Now that Texas has a lot more off season FRC events (4 this season), it might become more compelling to compete in FRC.
The fact that FRC is hard is part of the point. It wouldn't be the same competition if it were easy to run a team but that does come with a cost.