[David Lame]

I don't have a strong opinion about how to solve the growth problem. If you want to start with thousands of teams, and narrow things down to a single championship match, you have to have various "layers" of competition (i.e. districts->district championship/regional->8 divisions->4 rounds at Einstein.)
As the number of teams grows, you either have to lower the number of teams that advance to each new layer, or add layers, or knock off the top layer. If you add layers, (like with super-regionals) that means extra cost and extra time off school for students. There's no "easy" answer of how to handle that growth.

Nevertheless, it disturbs me that some people who have chosen one solution to the problem don't even seem to understand, or even want to understand, the tradeoffs involved with the other solutions. In particular, an awful lot of people who favor the "two championship" model, don't see to realize that there is something lost with that solution. An awful lot of people, including what would appear to be the people at HQ, seem to think that the "single championship" model has something to do with determining the best team. It doesn't. Sports don't really do that, ever. Some sports come closer than others. Our sport doesn't even come close. There's a huge amount of luck in most of our games, and the alliance selection process totally destroys the idea that the winning alliance is made up of the best teams. No, it is not the best teams that end up with the blue banners.

And that doesn't matter. What we are doing this weekend is still a real championship, and what we will do in 2017 will not be a real championship. That matters.

Does it matter enough to make one decision better than the others? I'll leave that to the professionals to decide, but I would feel better about it if I were convinced they understood why it matters.