Here's my two cents, so get ready for it because here it comes!
When you get down to it, not every team is going to be able to make it to nationals. For the life of me I can't remember just what the number was, but Dean at Nationals this previous year was talking about how quickly FIRST was going, there simply isn't anywhere that can take in that many people. Nevermind the venue, think hotels, transportation, etc. etc. etc. So, conlusion number 1 is that Nationals must eventually be limited.
Given that Nationals must be limited (I'm not saying that that's good, I'm just facing some facts), the question becomes how to limit it. This is the difficult part. Many ideas have been tossed around, and I have yet to see a bad one in the bunch. Saying that winners deserve to see how they do nationally makes sense, but so does first come, first serve. My idea is this - yes, make Nationals available to only those who qualify, but make it a much smaller (yes, I did say smaller) deal. Kind of along the same ideas as super regionals, enforce going to regionals instead of nationals. If nationals isn't nearly as big a deal as going to the regionals, then people won't be as upset when they can't go (for whatever reason that may be).
Is this the right answer? I honestly don't know. Is it just another idea to shout out and maybe get the juices flowing so someone else can come up with a better idea? Yes. Like Dean said, in the however many years he says its going to take to have FIRST offered in every high school, having everyone at Nationals just can't happen. It'd probably be for the best if we started planning for that now.
~Tom~
P.S. Please don't think I'm a pessimist! I'm really a nice guy, honest!
