Quote:
Originally Posted by Kevin Sevcik
I feel like a broken record on this point, but it seems like I keep having to say it.
As a team that has been to Champs 4 out of the last 4 years, I think you might be a little biased. 14% of FRC teams went to Champs this year. If you had your way, it'd be 9.5%. I'm guessing about half of them are regulars at champs. So in a 4 year span, maybe 25% of FRC gets to 1Champs. Which means that the competitiveness and truthiness of Champs is probably fairly irrelevant to something like 75% of FRC. And it only gets more irrelevant as the program grows in the future, especially as we move to districts and the random elements of wildcards and 2nd picks are eliminated. At some point it's going to turn into a huge expensive party for pretty much the same people every year. If PayneTrain worries about sponsors shelling out $15K to send a team to an "expo", I worry about sponsors shelling out millions of dollars to reach the same people every year. At some point you'd have to wonder about switching to a 2 or 4 year schedule to save money.
Also, I remember way back when Champs admission was changed from a free-for-all to a qualifying system. I'm pretty sure the howls of outrage are louder now only because there's like 5 times as many teams.
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I understand the need to expand to 2 events to add teams. However FIRST HQ ignored several suggestions on how to distribute teams so as to create a single championship. That's where the the real problem is.