[Lil' Lavery]

First off, we cannot forget how much that FIRST has already done to level the playing field. Limits on how much teams can spend, alliances, random qualification matches, more and more in the KoP, etc. Not to mention, we have 3 awards with 3 different criteria that are rewarded exclusively to Rookie teams at Regionals, 6 (4 top seeds) at Championship, and both Autodesk awards have a seperate championship award for first-year entrants. In fact, TWELVE rookie teams won awards at the Championship event in 2006. And there is only ONE award that a rookie CANNOT win (Chairman's).
The first element to success in every FIRST game thusfar has been building a reliable and competative drive base. The KoP drivebase can be assembled in just a couple of hours, and with IFI, AM, Banebots, and other off the shelf parts, a highly competative drive base only takes a couple days and virtually no custom fabrication. In several games, such as 02, 03, and 06, you didn't need much more than competative drive base to extraordinarily well at an event.
Lowering the standards is the last thing we need in FIRST, and that is what creating divisions, handi-capping, or any other system similar would do. By forcing teams that may be disadvantaged in terms of money or membership to compete on the same level as larger, richer teams we force creativity and hard work. And it can pay off. I can't even begin to tell you how many times I've seen rookie bots and thought to myself "why didn't I think of that?". The #1 seed at the largest regional in America was not only a rookie, but their bot was built largely in a barn. And they didn't even win Rookie All-Star or Rookie Inspiration! Why should we lower the standards?