[ratdude747]

Originally Posted by jee7s

This, in my humble opinion, this is why Zondag's proposal won't fly for Regional teams. FIRST wants everyone to move to Districts. Being able to highlight the work time out of the bag in your shop to teams is a substantial motivator to get people moving toward the district model. Particularly for Texas, where we are so large that the travel logistics are a big headache for teams, removing this distinction will further push teams here to stay with the Regional model. In my conversations with Texas teams, having the time out of the bag was consistently a top 3 reason for interest in districts. And, more often than not, that was enough of a reason to get a team to work through the hassle of planning the extra trips.

Given the plethora of other benefits to districts, this mentality, while probably true, is sad. Holding team's potential hostage like that isn't fair to said teams who are stuck in the middle of the debate. If one can improve, improve.

Most of the benefits of districts require districts to execute. This example isn't one of them. Other than the cost of extra bag ties, there isn't any additional cost to FIRST, so fiscally it's a wash. If they have legitimate reasons to not expand unbag time to everybody, fine, but withholding it purely to steer areas to districts isn't right IMHO.