[Lil' Lavery]

Originally Posted by Citrus Dad

Let's start with the justification voiced by many in other threads for why the championsplit should have coequal fields rather than tiered qualification (to paraphrase): The top elite teams inspire other teams and should other teams at the 2 events should have an equal chance of interacting with those inspiring teams. Therefore one event should not be allowed to have a concentration of elite teams. Now those same elite teams are in fact NOT more inspiring and therefore deserve no special treatment. If that's the case, then you should have no problem if the championships in fact do have a tiered qualification system so that the top 400 go to one event and the next 400 go to other. Your position is inconsistent if you both opposed tiered events AND argue that elite teams are not anymore inspirational.

My position isn't inconsistent, because that's not my position. You created a strawman, or minimally posited other people's viewpoint as mine. Stop trying to lump all of the people that you have disagreed with into one hivemind.

Originally Posted by Citrus Dad

Regardless, you are missing my point--this isn't about catering to elite teams.

Notice how that post (or all but one of mine in this thread) was not in response to you. Consider the posts I was responding to before considering whether or not I'm missing your point.

Originally Posted by Citrus Dad

My point is that FIRST needs the celebrity of elite teams in the sports metaphor to attract students from the broader society.

Show me the proof. So far we concentrate our "celebrity of elite teams" at both Championship and IRI, yet to date we haven't seen the widespread cultural inspiration we're aiming for (funny what happens when you suddenly consider that inspiration might not just be aimed at other teams, which also breaks down your opening paragraph's straw man). Perhaps FIRST's approach of more high profile events spread out might lead to more attention from broader society?

Originally Posted by Citrus Dad

No one has yet proposed a workable alternative model that will be as successful as the sports metaphor to reach widely across our society. Remember Kamen's goal is to change the culture so that scientists and engineers gain wider recognition and students aspire to be like them. You may not remember this ad campaign, but in the 1980s there was a hugely successful ad campaign with Michael Jordan who's pitch line was "Be like Mike." And the implication was obvious--emulate a celebrity pro athlete. This is a fundamental truth of marketing. You may not like marketing truths imply about us, but they are what they are.

I think two regional championships does just fine as the sports metaphor in terms of reaching across society. The people that the "championsplit" impacts are within our own borders as a community, not without it. Nobody outside of FIRST is going to care if we have one champion alliance or two, or if teams from Michigan aren't playing against teams from Texas. Outsideers will be able to understand North Championship and South Championship perfectly fine.

Originally Posted by Citrus Dad

So it's not about elite teams trying to "trump" HQs decision; it's about the usefulness of elite teams for promoting the mission of FIRST. Every successful sport needs its elite celebrities. In my favorite sport, track & field, this has become a real problem because too many of the celebrity athletes disappear in non-Olympic years. The sport is now heavily dependent on Usain Bolt, and he was gone last year so interest dropped significantly. In 1960, 80,000 spectators showed up for the US-USSR dual meet at Stanford. This year other than the Prefontaine meet in Eugene (about 13,000), no meet will draw more than 10,000 spectators and most less than 5,000. The elite track athletes now avoid meeting each other because the current incentives tell them to do so. I certainly want FIRST to avoid the fate of U.S. track & field.

STEM absolutely needs celebrities. The thing is, as you alluded to earlier, FIRST is about recognizing scientists and engineers as celebrities, not teams. FIRST doesn't replicate sports for the sake of FIRST being a sport. FIRST replicates sport for the sake of changing the larger culture. This isn't about making the Citrus Circuits a household name, this is about making Woodie Flowers a household name. FIRST growing as a sport can help that, but it's not the end-all be-all. Not to mention, but the reality is that the outside public doesn't know the difference between the Citrus Circuits and Dawgma. Neither of our teams is going to attract a significant difference in outside public opinion, regardless of our status within the community as "elite teams." We're not even close the point where people outside our own community track the results and learn about teams they aren't personally invested in. I'll be pleasantly surprised if we reach that point by 2020.