[EricH]

Originally Posted by Jon Stratis

My point wasn't aimed at discussions on the number of divisions... there are a lot of reasons to prefer one number over another, and it's a worthwhile discussion. My point was the sidetrack discussion of how the "level of play" changes based on the simple number of teams at champs. That is just not a worthwhile discussion to have, especially at this point, on many levels.

I'm going to agree on this.

I'm also going to reiterate a point I made the last time this came up, that some people, who think this is a robot building contest, are in serious trouble--and that's actually from Dean or Woodie at Kickoff some years back.

This is a robot building contest, yes--but it's also a bunch of life lessons, a passel of inspiration, and hopefully some recognition. It's also a pretty severe time sink... Treating it as just a robot building contest is not accurate.


What I'd be hoping for would be 8 divisions, 50 teams each, NO MORE THAN 12 matches per team. (Wait, what?) Before you all start going crazy, I'd also say that no fewer than 10 matches would be acceptable. And the reason for that is to allow either more free time or less overall time. This would particularly benefit smaller teams, in that they could get out more and see more of the event, if the free time route was chosen, or that they might be able to cheat a little bit on travel and come in on Thursday morning with minimal loss of time in the pits. More inspiration, less time sink/burnout... interesting dilemma, I'd say.