[Ben Lauer]

I am strongy against a point penalty, and here is why....

Who remembers watching the webcast of the first FIRST regional this year? For all of Friday, if you scored 60 pts, it was basically an automatic win. At Nationals, a 60 would win maybe 6% of matches. So how could you set a point penalty system? At nationals the penatlies wouldn't mean as much, and that is where they are most important! Also, would the change the point penalties from year to year? I rarely saw a 100+ match in 2003 (stack attack); but this year, that was only two hanging bots!

A point system would be too confusing to inforce, and too confusing to change from week to week and year to year. There must be penalties that carry the same weight no matter what year, what week, what tournament.

-Ben