[Kevin Sevcik]

To all the people griping that 25% of teams attending is too high, I'm going to repeat something I posted in the other thread:

2003 Champs had 291 teams out of 787 total. That's 37%. If 25% isn't a "real" World Champs, should we be calling 65, 111, and 469 and revoking their 2003 World Champs banners?

In case anyone is curious:
2004: 31%
2005: 34%
2006: 30%
2007: 26%
2008: 23%
2009: 21%
2010: 19%
2011: 17%
2012: 17%

There's no hard data pre-2003 because that's pre-TIMS, but I can confidently say that Nationals in 1998 had nearly every team in FRC, and nearly every team competing in the most ludicrous double elimination playoff you've ever seen. I'm pretty sure Nats/Champs maintained the >25% participation rate between 1998 and 2003.

Which is all to say that >25% participation in Champs was the case for most of FRC history. So unless teams have gotten much worse on average, there were an awful lot of Champs held with the equivalent of 800 teams, and I don't think they were particularly terrible. Aside from 2003, which was terrible for unrelated reasons.

Other points:
A single 800 team Mega-Champs sounds pretty ridiculous. Especially since we haven't seen how a 600 team Mega-Champs works. How about we wait a few weeks before we decide that's a good idea?

I'm curious what percentage of the 400/600 teams at Champs you people actually interact with. I know when I'm there, the vast majority of teams I interact with are in my Division. How likely is it you'll even notice on a day-to-day basis that you're at a Champs with only half the world there?

I'm personally a supporter of the idea of getting more teams the Champs experience. I hear a lot of people in the thread declaring how getting to Champs once motivated them to do it again. But as the program grows and a single Champs dwindles to the top 10% of all teams, how many teams are ever going to have that experience and develop that drive to get to Champs?

To the objections that we should be focusing instead on DCMPs and Super Regionals: Would it make you feel better if we just called Detroit and Houston Super Regionals instead? If FIRST is serious about keeping "Champs" attendance in the 20-25% range, then they'll have to roll out more and more of these, and eventually they'll just morph into defacto Super Regionals/Regional Champs. And at that point there will probably be enough teams to funnel into a reincarnated World Champs. My read on the whole thing is this is a transitional period while we don't have enough teams to justify/support the Super-Regional -> WCMP model.

Finally, I really hope the senior FIRST leadership brings their FRC(lothing) gear to that town hall. And for the love of all that's good, I hope everyone can keep things civil.