[Oblarg]

Originally Posted by Lil' Lavery

Anyone who thinks a half day of qualification matches, often involving trainee drivers, produces anything close to an accurate top 8 is kidding themselves. I've been to quite a few off-seasons where picking is forbidden in the top 8, and I've encountered more than a few teams that cheered when they found themselves at the #9 or #10 seed at the end of qualifications, rather than as an alliance captain. The system becomes ridiculous.

Seconding this. If the top 8 were reliably the strongest 8 robots at competition, then eliminating picking among them for the sake of better competitive balance might be a good idea. Unfortunately, given the extreme variance in rankings at FRC events (especially offseasons), this is not the case, and all you do is make things worse.

As for the OP, I'm not sure what I think about teams picking their own "B" robots for eliminations. On the one hand, yes, it does reduce the number of teams that get to participate in elims. On the other, is that really a compelling reason not to do it, especially when the alternative quite likely reduces the standard of play in eliminations (which is less fun for everyone)? I think this is a question of values, and probably has different answers for different events with different atmospheres.