I would encourage everyone to take a couple of deep breaths here. The announcement caught us all off guard and the implications of it are shocking at first glace. I personally had the same gut reaction as many of you and still have many of those feelings. That being said, these changes wont come about until the 2017 season.
There are some things that I am sure FIRST can't change at this point (locations and dates), but they admitted that lots of other details are still being worked out. Lets not jump to any conclusions as I am sure more to this development will be announced in the near future, and with enough constructive feedback FIRST may re-consider some specific details or at least explain the reasoning behind some of the decisions.
Personally I am going to focus on the upcoming championship (two weeks away!
) and wait for more information. The world is not all doom and gloom, and on our worst days we still get to play with robots, even if there are 8 champions instead of 4.