[MikeDubreuil]

I don't think FIRST should abandon creating a new field every year. There are so many more positives than negatives. If the field was similar the games would be too similar and play and the season would become boring.

As far as the financials go:
FIRST's 2003 revenue is about $15 million. Each field costs about $50,000. Assuming there's 6 fields that's $300k in fields. That's 2% of revenue. I don't think 2% is too much to spend for what is essentially the most important and exciting part of FIRST each year. Sure, we don't count Dean, Dave's or anyone elses labor from the game design comittee, but if we started billing out labor on this volunteer project we'd be in the hundreds-of-millions of dollars.