Originally Posted by EricH
I'm with Basel. Plan now, work on effecting change now, act surprised when it happens like you figured it would.
Assumptions: FIRST wants to keep some % of teams, say 25 or so, attending; districts are a thing in most of FRC; people have figured out that 2 geographically separated champs isn't a bad thing.
What I would expect...
Known districts: MI, PNW, MAR, NE, IN, TX (future--2 seasons from now?).
Assumed districts: MN, CA, Canada, and let's just figure a couple more in and around the Midwest for good measure.
The championships: Detroit maintains its contract and serves as the Northern Championship, MI, MN, Canada, IN, and other northern Midwest districts attending. Houston also maintains its contract (or loses it to New Orleans or one of the other Texas cities), serving as Southern Championship for TX, LA, southern Midwest/Great Plains, Mexico. A Western Championship is opened up, this for CA, PNW, HI, Australia, China, and the states on Mountain time. (And Arizona.) Location in Vegas, or Salt Lake City, or L.A. (I can dream, right?) And, on the East Coast, there's an Eastern Championship, for NE, MAR, and the rest of the Atlantic coast, as well as Europe and Israel. Each of the four has 200-400 teams.
"Interconnecting"--teams attending other area Championships is done by allocating about a quarter of spots at each championship event for teams from the other three events, and using a lottery signup system to award those "out-of-area" spots.
Sometime around 2022, somebody realizes that having a Final Four is really a slick idea, and we start again on the Super Regional model, with each Championship as a super Regional.
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