[GeeTwo]

For sake of argument, let's assume the game is announced on the first Saturday after Labor Day, and competitions occurred the same weeks they currently do. In 2017, this would add 17 weeks to the current 6-1/2 (stop build) to 16 week (St. Louis CMP) schedule. At first blush, this nearly quadruples the time for low resource (but non-rookie) teams which really do stop on stop build day, and only doubles the time for the powerhouse teams. However, as the calendar bottleneck is relaxed, the limitations of dollars and build hours become more important. There are doubtless a few mid-high teams with plenty of mentors and dollars that would make great hay on this, but most low to mid resource teams would likely have enough difficulty with mentors or dollars or both, that it would be a very limited set of teams which could do much better than double their effort at fielding a competitive robot, and a significant number which could not increase that much.

Making essentially the whole scholastic year build+competition season would also make it much more difficult for teams to do as much community service/outreach and recruiting.

Edit: reading things posted since I started, let me say that yes, we have a number of robotics members who play fall sports who would no longer be able to be "full" members of the team. I should also note here that while I am usually not the only mentor at most of our events during the summer and early fall, I am the only one who is at most of our events during this period; many of our mentors disappear, and most greatly reduce their time involvement for six to eight or even nine months.

Bottom line: While I am uncertain as to whether getting rid of bag day will equalize things or increase disparity, I am rather inclined to believe that moving the start of season forward will increase the overall disparity between low and high resource teams.