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Re. the Schedule...
There's been at least a little discussion in this thread of possibly changing the schedule to allow more teams to compete in the elimination matches. While I'm all for more teams being able to compete longer into the competition, I think the only way we're going to see that is if the alliance size increases(to 3v3 or 4v4, maybe?). Here's why...
-At some sites, they did not have many more teams competing than the current 24 required for elims. You would be hard pressed to increase this number much more without somehow(?) guaranteeing that at least X teams would be at a regional event.
-There was a time when everyone advanced to the elims. However, with the growth of FIRST(and the realization a few years ago that eventually everyone was not going to be able to go to EPCOT,) they moved away from this. I believe that this moving away from "all teams advance" was to prepare us for the time when not all teams would be able to attend the championship.
-I've heard before of cutting practice time in half and starting qualifying on Thursday afternoon as a way to give everyone more play time. While from a team's perspective(including my own when I was on that side of things full-time), this is a no-brainer way to get more qualifying time in, on the event side of things, it's not quite that easy. At every regional I was at, and even at nationals, there were still teams registering and getting inspected up until the last minute on Thursday night, with some inspections not being completed until the pit area opened on Friday. With the current pseudo-random match pairings system, there is no real way to say, "OK, these teams have been inspected, so let's have them start qualifying tonight, and everyone else starts in the morning." Not to mention the logistical nightmare of such a setup if it did exist.
Just my thoughts, seeing things from both sides of the coin...
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Nate Smith
nsmith@smythsoft.com
12 seasons, 4 teams, and more time logged behind the scorekeeper's table than I care to remember...
returning for 2011? only time will tell...
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