[EricH]

Originally Posted by efoote868

Having read the majority of the posts in other threads, I think that is not the only concern and I think other concerns are more difficult to address, such as allowing Michigan teams to mix with Texas teams in a reasonable/fair way. Bringing the winners of the North and South together does not address that in any way.

I think this is the rub of a lot of "issues" with the last two major "WE'RE DOING THIS" announcements. (That would be FiM District Pilot, circa 2008 offseason, and ChampionSplit, currently under discussion.)

For whatever reason, FIRSTers are in general a friendly bunch--we like to meet new people, steal ideas from new places, push a few boundaries, borrow tools from each other regardless of location, and go to restaurants en masse in brightly-colored shirts. But on more than one occasion, FIRST has essentially said "You can only play with [and, by extension, do the above list with] teams in YOUR area unless the folks from elsewhere come to you". One of the best moves in the history of the district system was the cross-district play this season--the real best one will come when non-district teams can play in a district on some basis.

Blocking out teams from playing with other teams by any means other than "the registration at this event is full, oh and they get two events so they didn't want to come anyway" prevents teams from exchanging ideas that are often difficult to translate to online media. This can tend to turn robots in one area of the country into "type-a" and another area into "type-b" because those areas really only get inspiration via the robots they see... This isn't exactly a good thing.

There are ways to deal with this, mind you. Exactly what they might possibly be I leave as an exercise to the reader.