I dont know that I would consider these awardees "shafted." I think the ceremony that the did was really nice, and it wasnt split up at all like the later ones. They showed the animations and inventor winners submissions(which is an improvement over the past/some regionals) and I think they gave a lot of credit to the awardees.
Plus, if you look at it, these are the awards that are decided well ahead of time. The judges dont have to go and interview the teams, they already have the materials before the competition. FIRST knows that all teams will be there friday morning, because they dont know when their qualification matches are until that morning. If they did it friday evening, half the teams would be gone, same with saturday morning.
The only thing I would suggest for improvement is to make it clear that these awards are going to be given then. It may have been mentioned somewhere, but our team missed what was going on. We made it for what we expected to be opening ceremonies, only to realize that awards were going on.
So sit back, relax and enjoy the awards
An award is a huge accomplishment, no matter when it is given. Heck I would take ours even if they were going to give it to us at our pit with no one else watching! Its that you know that you accomplished that much, not that a million people got to see it while exhausted and sleeping through half of it.