[Rypsnort]

My thoughts on this:

We can't do anything about it for the next few years so live with it for now.

For those of us who have gone to Champs we know how awesome and inspiring it is. If FIRST is going to live up to its name and inspire kids and the public about STEM then it needs to reach a lot of people. This makes it so the maximum number of people can go to these events. And with the size to which FIRST has grown it is hard to get a decent percentage of teams into one event. So FIRST's intentions were good in making this move.

Now I know this makes it so that the winners are not completely the champions of the world, but all that needs to be done is have IRI or some off-season event have those alliances come and play each other for the unofficial-official championship.

Lastly, when the time comes to restructure again there are many routes to chose from. IMHO moving to an all districts/state championship format would be the best. Seeing how successful the current districts and state championships are this would be a great option. Also this would be more like other sports with more levels of play (district event, district championship, Nationals). From what the webcast showed the MSC event is similar to Champs in the atmosphere created at the event, so instead of one you get two events with festivities of Champs if you are lucky enough to go to both.

Have a great day.