[Lil' Lavery]

The bumper zone rules have not changed since January 7th (with the exception of a Q&A clarification that stated a robot on the ramp that has contact, iniated by either party, outside of the bumper zone does not suffer a penalty for either robot, due to the unlevel surfacing), they just were not enforced very well at msot (if any) regional competitions. Go read the rules again, and ask a head ref tomorrow if you still have questions.
The spirit of the rules, at least how I and my team interpreted them, was to minimize any potentially harmful contact by forcing the elimination of contact outside of the bumper zone. This was mean to keep all hits "clean" body-on-body hits, nothing that can spear, impale, tip, trip, flip, dent (if you actually have your bumpers mounted, our .75" bend into our right side lower box channel shows why you should have them, and we now have them attached again), or otherwise harm another robot.