[Mr V]

Personally I don't think that the District > DCMP > Super Regional > CMP is a sustainable proposition. CMP would become a competition of the "rich and retired". Yes district events reduce the cost for some teams while greatly increasing it for others. Depending on where you live in relation to the district events or previous regionals and whether they are Fri-Sat or Sat-Sun events it means that your time away from work or school can stay the same or possibly go up. Traveling to DCMP can cost similar to going to a second Regional but less than half of the teams currently do so.

I think the longer term solution is a District > Regional CMP > World CMP path. My proposal would be that we still define and run the individual districts as they do now however instead of advancing the top team to a DCMP they advance to the RCMP and from there teams advance to WCMP. The cost to the teams that advance to the RCMP can go up or down vs the DCMP depending on where they live of course but overall it is more sustainable economically and from a volunteer and time away aspect. More teams get to experience a Championship event and there is still one WCMP event.

Because I do agree that experiencing a CMP type event is very beneficial I'd propose that in each district there are a number of reserved lottery spots to move on to the RCMP. If you advance on merit you aren't eligible for a lottery spot for say 3-4 years and if you advance on that lottery slot again you aren't eligible for another in say another 3-4 years. I'd propose that a RCMP would include the FLL and FTC programs like CMP currently does and have say 200 FRC teams at each of the 3-5 RCMPs. You would get more teams to a CMP experience and they wouldn't only be the ones that could afford the entry fees, travel costs and time off on a regular basis like I fear that a D > DCMP > SR > CMP system would. I'm not sure where I stand on giving lottery slots away at the RCMP to go to CMP.