Quote:
Originally Posted by EricH
My point wasn't necessarily that that was the case, but rather that one of FIRST's stated items was to reduce team travel costs. If you're a Detroit team and get assigned to Houston because you're a "Challenger" team (and "Challenger" is in Houston, rather than being assigned to Detroit based on distance, FIRST looks an awful lot like a bunch of liars, no? I mean, unless they offer to pay your travel down there, which I highly doubt they'd do. Being on the west coast, let's just say that for us out here it's kind of irrelevant, we have to fly anyways, so I'm really hoping that Salt Lake City is being talked to now about 2021...
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First may lower the travels for a percentage of about 20% of FRC teams. For the remainder travel costs will largely remain unchanged because they will still fly in. The question then is whether the top tier teams in those 2 regions are interested in being locked into only those locations. This may be particularly true in Michigan where the District system already effectively excludes play with out of state teams. (I've heard those in the PNW bemoan the insularity of their season.)
Note that the event really can only be held where there is a covered stadium with an adjacent convention center. I think there's about a half dozen in North America: St. Louis, Detroit, Houston, Atlanta, Minneapolis and Vancouver. Las Vegas might have the convention center space to stage it.