[EricH]

Originally Posted by GKrotkov

On the subject of potential solutions; I seem to remember Siri floating a "exchange" possibility on the first thread - where teams going to one championships would have the ability to trade their slot with a team going to the other championships.

That would certainly be a start towards solving the "region locking" - I can't see any downsides at the moment. Is there something I've missed?

I believe that that is one of the things FIRST is looking at--see the recap posts earlier in this thread.

My personal preference would be that two "exchanges" would be in play.
1) Region exchange. Basically, random-draw the regions every year, or swap X regions every year. Somewhat easy to manage, if it was done early enough (let's just say in August).
2) Team exchange. Teams that for whatever reason want to (or need to) go to the "wrong" championship can trade with teams at that championship with the same dilemma.

That being said, I think that the effect on teams of the announcement--and then any perceived stonewalling at the town hall--is a very definite negative. Having a little bit more openness--including an announcement about how "changing eligibility to maintain a reasonable size at Championship is very difficult, so we are looking at other options, does anybody have any ideas"--from the start would have been, I think, much better received. And they'd have gotten a lot more constructive feedback before making the call--now, I think they'd have made the same call, but there are different ways to put things that can give a much different "reaction". See "spin" in the politicians' dictionary.