Oh man, I haven't actually posted in a long time. Also wow, did I really just manage to put off an entire night's-worth of work to read all of this thread?
Okay, so let me begin by saying the following:
1) I'm not a big fan of the new Championship format for reasons that have have already been mentioned in this thread.
2) FIRST HQ could probably handled this better, particularly in the department of asking for community input prior to (presumably) signing contracts.
3) The data do not lend themselves to the assertion that this move will significantly decrease travel expenses for the overwhelming majority of Championship-attending teams.
But for the love of all that is beautifully powder coated and covered by anti-gravity circles, this is not the start of the apocalypse; we all know that the Mayan calendar ends in 2012, not 2017:
4) We don't know all of the information, that fact is both explicitly and implicitly stated by FIRST. The unknown information could be bad (e.g. all teams will now be required to build bumpers in not two, but
three different colors
), or it could be fantastic (e.g. all teams will now receive corndogs in their KoPs).
5) Please stop with the "FIRST is clearly doing this for the money just to line their own pockets [paraphrased]." Seriously? That is above and beyond pure, unsubstantiated speculation and does nothing but unnecessarily inflame the situation.
6) This change is not equivalent to everyone getting participation trophies. Heck, the number of awards (save the big ones) given out at Championship increased by a factor of four last year and the general consensus seemed fairly positive. But now an increase of a factor of two, two years down the road is the end of the "C" in FRC. (I freely admit that there is a bigger issue with the doubling of awards like CA, WFA, etc., see (1)).
7) We should all recognize here on CD that this change doesn't really directly affect the majority of FRC teams. A giant percentage of teams only sporadically (if ever) attend Championships, so no, they're not going to be disappointed that they're not going to see their friends from the other side of the country and they're also not going to be wringing their hands over exactly who will be crowned THE World Champion. I'm not saying this to minimize people's reservations, I myself am flying to STL to be with my team and to see old friends from around the world. I'm putting it out there so that we keep in mind that most FRCers (as hard to believe as it is) actually aren't reading this thread right now.
8) I am willing to give FIRST HQ the benefit of the doubt here. They didn't make this decision in a vacuum (even if they didn't directly ask for input). You may have noticed that many people in this thread have spoken about how transformational the Championship experience was for them. In fact, many are so passionate about it that they're up at 01:30 writing a post instead of sleeping. But note that they talk about GOING to championship and SEEING and TALKING to the Poofs*, not watching a webcast of Einstein with bated breath or just HEARING about the Poofs' autonomous skillzzzz. So maybe, just maybe, when Don Bossi says "... we want to give more and more kids that 'Championship Experience' that we know is so transformative in their lives..." we actually agree with him
; even if not in the specifics.
I know this is getting super long, so I'll end it with a brief anecdote: In between trying to keep up with this thread I got an email from a newly-minted MARS alum who, in the greatest tradition of procrastination, decided to write down some of her MARS memories for a project that we call 'Marvin's Journal.' And it struck me that for every memory like this:
"I remember when we won our first team award at worlds, and screamed “WE ARE MARS” from the nosebleed section. - 2013 St. Louis World Championship"
There were two like this:
"I remember when it felt like I was changing either Marvin V’s drive belts or polycord belts every match. - 2012 Da Whole Season"
"I remember when we lost with MORT, and then became best friends. - 2011 Palmetto Regional"
And it reaffirmed my sincere belief that as long as this is how the students experience and remember FIRST, we'll be okay. We may we wish and work to make things better (as we should), and we may even gripe. But at the end of the day I'm still going spend Thursdays crawling under robots with a flashlight and an inspection checklist, and I'm still going hurt my hands clapping for that rookie team who's robot was a true GP-community-effort, and I'm definitely still going to bawl my eyes out when MARS wins Chairman's - and that's what really matters.
-Luke Scime
*Specific shout-out only because you guys are awesome and have been featured so prominently in this thread.