I agree with a lot of the points that Paul C. makes.
My reason for starting this thread was to have a discussion around consistency of rules more than the details of this particular rule.
I also was poking FIRST a bit, yes, because, frankly, I am left scratching my head around the question of "what problem is FIRST solving by not providing clarity around this issue?" It is clear from the FRC Blog that they know there is a problem with consistent enforcement. It is also clear that the rule is deliberately vague. I assume that they are working behind the scenes to address this for Week 2 and beyond. So why are they not clearing this up publicly?
As I type right now, I believe I have a reasonable theory. FIRST does not want clarity. When a team is just not going to be able to compete under a strict limit, they want to be able to look the other way. BUT but but, they don't want to make this an official policy because
A) if team gets ridiculous with respect to the transformation time, they want to be able to rein them in and
B) they don't want to upset folks who will no doubt say, "if I knew I had X extra seconds above and beyond 60 , I would have designed a completely different robot that would have played on Einstein. Guaranteed!"
I don't know if this the really the reason for the lack of clarification but it does seem to explain things.
Dr. Joe J.