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Re: On side ball use agreement.
Just an observation: a clear majority of the posters on this thread were mentors/college students/alumni/not current student team members. I saw a few students posting, but they were overwhelmingly a minority.
As far as agreements go, I think that this one is pretty benign and beneficial, more in the spirit of coopertition that in trying to undercut the rules to get ahead. 1. Any team can participate in this, regardless of ability, and the benefits are likely to be proportional to both alliances. If one alliance is much stronger, they will likely benefit more in raw score, but in terms of a percentage increase from an average, non agreement score, both alliances will probably see a roughly equal benefit.
2. Both teams benefit. This one is pretty clear, there's no match-throwing, or rankings conniving, or a more capable alliance trying to dupe a less capable alliance into doing something not beneficial to them.
3. It does depend on both sides, but that's no different from coopertition in past years. If one side pulls out of this agreement without warning, the other side will likely be hurt if they were counting on participation from both sides during the match. However, I don't see this as much different than two alliances agreeing to focus on getting the coopertition points, and then one side realizing they can't/won't, and the other side then having wasted time they could have spent scoring points for themselves on trying to complete their end of the (now-failed) coopertition.
Ultimately, drive teams will probably make a match-by-match decision if this agreement is still viable/worthwhile by the time competition season comes along, but I don't think it's obviously either wrong or right to choose one way or the other.
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