[mike o'leary]

while i can accept first-come first-serve as a means of limitting nats, i have to strongly oppose any other means of limitation, like having to qualify to go. many of my reasons for this have already been posted, so i wont repeat them. one that i dont think anyone has mentioned, however, is this:

to qualify for nats by doing well in regionals gives teams with a huge budget even more unfair advantage. how many teams went to 2 or more regionals? the teams that go to multiple regionals are almost exclusively teams that have been around for a long time, have enormous budgets, and strong support in both the student body and the faculty/administration.

these teams are given extra chances to go to nats.

furthurmore, to get these enormous budgets a team needs strong faculty/administration support, which is most readily gotten through support from the student body. one of the main reasons that people originally get involved with first is the idea that 'hey this means i get to go to disney' im not saying that this is a good reason to do first, or that its the reason people stick with first. it is, however, something that gets people to join a robotics team in the first place.
take away nats, and you take away the guarenteed trip to disney. people then say 'hey i could go to disney, if we win at a regionals...thats interesting' then forget it figuring that its not like theyll win the regionals.
if we lose student support, then first either cant grow, or its growth will stagnate.

plus, these same multi-reginal teams throw a wrench into the equation: what if they win more then one regional?