[alopex_rex]

A few thoughts on this:

My team last went to Championships in 2012, my first year, and I can tell you guys: yes, it is an experience, and an amazing one at that. FIRST recognizes that, and I think teams like mine do as well. I'm inclined to think that those who object strongly to having two championships are associated with teams that are invited very frequently if not routinely, and don't appreciate how much it means to teams for whom attending the championship is an incredible achievement. I honestly don't understand why so many people are angry at letting more teams go, especially since the number of teams in the world has increased so much. If they stick to one championship, the percentage of teams that attends will get less and less every year, meaning every team that isn't a consistent powerhouse will have less and less hope of attending.

Our team of course is excited about the Detroit Championships, since Detroit is about an hour away from where we work. But given the massively disproportionate size of FiM, it makes a lot of sense. It would be interesting to see a map of North America where the sizes of states/provinces were proportional to the number of FRC teams they contained; I suspect it would make the choice of Houston and Detroit seem very reasonable.

It's a bit weird to think about having two world champion alliances, but think: right now there isn't a single world champion. There's three. In a couple years there will be six. Perhaps that could be considered diluting the honor, but as a member of a team that is happy just to attend the championships, I'm not going to respect a champion team less for being one of a group of 0.2% of teams instead of 0.1%.

I was excited when I heard the news at MSC this weekend, and honestly I was surprised to see such a backlash. I also don't expect it to have any effect; any organization that reversed massive decisions because of some angry responses online wouldn't have survived nearly as long as FIRST has.