[IKE]

One piece of Historical information that I think would be enlightening if someone could put it together is the number of unique teams that have competed at the championship vs. the number of championship slots.

I think the inverse of this, IE the number of unique teams taht have never competed at the championship might be eye-opening as well.

I know the number of teams that have played in elims/playoffs vs. the number of slots is very eye-opening. Jim Z. did a study on that a few years ago, and it was pretty surprising. My guess is Championship slots would be similar. IE, I suspect that about 200/320-400 slots are routinely the same teams over and over... thus the realy mix of championship experience is a much smaller percentage. The 200 new spots this year and next year will support that quite a bit, also, the 200 new spots in 2017 and beyond will dramatically increase the "newbies" or "unique" championship experiences.

I personally do not think that every team needs to compete at the championship. Mathematically, FIRST seems to discuss the 25% attendance as if that will make it so that every team can participate within a 4 year window. Fact of the matter is, the math just doesn't work that way.