[Justin]

Okay,

So I think that by far the single greatest change to FIRST was alliances. There are two impacts of alliances that seem to have been over looked (at least in the threads I skimmed). One is that pre-alliances there was no "FIRST Community" if you talked to someone on another team at a regional or sat with another team you were a traitor and conspiring with the enemy. I often think about how many of the friendships I have now in the FIRST Community would simply not have been possible pre-alliances.

Secondly I think another HUGE impact on FIRST in general which was an off shoot of alliances was the concept of "copertition." Pre-alliances everything was raw score. The advent of copertition has it's pros (though I'm loathe to admit them) and cons as with everything. Certainly the idea that your score is dependent on the score of your opponent has forever altered the FIRST landscape (for the worse in my own opinion).

Lastly I'll just say briefly that Rumble at the Rock and in fact the entire Plymouth North Team are entities that will not be replaced. At the time they were the team that I think many other teams wanted to try and emulate in the way they carried themselves, presented themselves to the community. Perhaps a large part of what one them the chairman's award is that the reached out to the FIRST community as a whole before it was perhaps viewed as appropriate (and now even required.)

Sorry for the long winded post. Hopefully you made it here.

-Justin