[Joe Ross]

One way to work around this would be to take a break between the end of matches and alliance selection. This way, teams have a chance to mull over the final rankings, and talk to the teams they are thinking about picking. I beleive FIRST did this one year, but I can't remember which.

However, it is much better now then it was in 1999. In 1999, you couldn't pick teams ranked in the top 8. Thus, if you fell from 5th to 13th in the last few matches and people didn't realize it, you'd have no chance. However, this year, if teams 1-4 had wanted to pick you, they could have picked you regardless of whether you were 5th or 13th. It would affect the 5th through 8th seeds, if they hadn't noticed it.

I can only think of once that one of my teams have felt "snubbed" in the alliance selection. That was nationals in 1999. We ranked in the mid 30's and I thought we were better then some of the teams that did get picked. However, two teams in close proximity in the pits to us (308 and 312) were also snubbed, and their robot's were even better then ours, so it made me feel better.