Quote:
Originally Posted by rlowe61
This is an interesting topic that can be filled with a lot of opinion. 
To look at a team’s previous rankings is a start, but one must know the game before you can say the competition will be harder at one location rather than another. Also looking at an overall OPR ranking, is not always a complete understanding of a team. How many members graduated, how strong their student base is, did they lose/gain any mentors that would affect the team. All of these are determining factors in the overall strength of a particular team. 
Also, remember that if you look at the competition level of a team that attends multiple events, that team gets better, so an event later in the year, with many teams that have already competed will likely be a harder event. An example of that is to look at previous years Alamo and Lonestar events. Of these competitions many of the same teams compete, it doesn’t matter which was earlier than the other, the second event is a tougher event. There are many pairs of events similar to this example around the country. 
I love that everyone is already looking at the competition, but without knowing the game it is a difficult call. If the game is something that no one has seen, how can you tell how a team will do? Maybe a Rooky Team will step up and design the ultimate robot that can accomplish everything the game allows….there are a lot of unknowns at this time and until everyone has competed in this year’s game who knows.
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You've just described what I hate the most about the great sport of college football: pre-season rankings. In the world of college football, media outlets try to assign rankings before the season starts to generate hype, the media $$$, and show their perceptions of which teams are strong. Most of the times, the end of year rankings are completely different from the preseason rankings.
While i expect most FRC teams to be more stable than college football programs, all we can do before these regionals play is the same thing the media does before the college football teams play: Speculate, hype, and try to use previous year's stats to justify our predictions.
However, i'd say FRC can be more predictable than football 9 times out of 10
