[smurfgirl]

From personal experience, I can see it working either way:

Last year at the UTC New England Regional, our robot was ranked 40 out of 40 in the second to last qualifying match, (though our win in the our last qualifying match brought us up to 34/40). Our ranking didn't really justify the capabilities of our robot though; we lost a lot of matches due to alliance partners not showing up (this led to a 1 on 3 situation because of backbots) or because of alliance partners who didn't function properly. We made sure to let other teams know this... if we hadn't, we probably wouldn't have been picked by 177 and 176... and we wouldn't have won the Regional. So selling yourself to other teams could work out for the better.

This year at the UTC Connecticut Regional, we ranked 8 of 49, so we were alliance captains (for the first time ever!). We had already established a positive relationship with team 195 (from working with and against them inprevious matches), which, combined with our robot's good performance is probably why they (the 6th ranked team) chose us. Together we decided on 558 as our third alliance partner, not because 558 had come up to us and told us how great they were, but because we (and our team's scouters) had noted that they were a great robot with amazing defense and a good ramp. So sometimes you don't need to sell yourself to get noticed.

At least, that's the way I see it.