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Originally Posted by Alex2614
Don said in St. Louis they they are looking into holding a small event where the winners of the two championships compete together. Now THAT is an event that could be televised. And then everyone that is complaining about having one world champion can be happy.
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Yes, it could be televised, but then you have additional costs, to teams and to FIRST. You need to find another venue. Students need to take more time off of their jobs or school. Mentors need to use more vacation days. It just doesn't make sense at all. If FIRST decides to cover the entire cost of the special weekend event, that's a HUGE expense for them to cover. I would much rather FIRST spend that money on other things.
Plus, when we get to the point of 60 Championsplit events, how are we going to decide which alliances go to that premier event?
Separating Einstein (or whatever the Field of Champions is called) from the Championsplit events is just as unsustainable as the current model.
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But for me, I personally don't really care about that, and neither do our sponsors. Our sponsors care that we attended championship. And if more teams can go back to their sponsors and say that they went to a world-level event, how can that be a bad thing? They won't care that there were 2 world level events. They won't care about how many teams were there.
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Except when we get up to 60 Championsplit events, they wouldn't be world-level,
because there wouldn't be any international teams. With your projected growth, Ontario, Quebec, Alberta, Mexico, Israel, Australia would all have their own Championsplit events. Even if you lived right across the border in Windsor, you would still probably go to the Ontario event, not the Detroit one.
There's an undeniable prestige that comes along with attending the Championship, and with each additional Championsplit event, that prestige is decreased. This is a known phenomenon in art, where the more available something is, the less "special" the reproduced or original piece of art is (ask anyone who has seen the actual Mona Lisa, and they'll probably say "it's smaller than I thought it would be." Not "It's amazing," not "it was just like I imagined it." Just disappointment because of oversaturation). The paper is called
"Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction" and it's a great read (
PDF here - but fair warning, it's fairly jargon-y)
You really do have to ask yourself the question "why is the Championship a special event?" Because if it's the prestige of the event, the Championsplit wrecks that. If it's the ability to talk to teams from very different places, the Championsplit wrecks that. If it's the need to crown a single champion, the Championsplit wrecks that. What do you want a Championship to be?