Quote:
Originally Posted by pufame
I know that with nationals in Atlanta a lot of teams up the east coast drive down (we live in the northernmost part of PA and drove down) and unfortunately most teams from the west coast have to fly (I'm not sure if any drove or not). With nationals in the middle of the country I believe it would increase the number of teams that would need to fly... I could be wrong though. And also I think that having CNN in Atlanta is a huge plus (they arranged a satellite feed to a local news station).
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Actually, I did a brief study on this when Indy bid for the championships and almost got it. I'd have to find the old file, but it did not increase the number of teams that would need to fly - in fact it reduced the number. I think I set the driving distance to be reasonable at 10hrs, and the number of teams within that radius to Indy was more than that to Atlanta. Even at 8-9hrs driving distance it still won out. I believe I initially used the team attendance from the '05 championships, I forget. But when you look at the population distribution of all FRC teams - you have many, many teams in the midwest and east coast, and even south, within a very reasonable driving distance to Indy.
Indiana has a strong FIRST community and state educational support, and I don't think getting news attention is too difficult. We can also draw from many of the surrounding states media pretty easily since IL, MI, OH, WI, MN are all strong in FIRST. Obviously I would like to see it come to Indiana sometime but mostly because I see a lot of pros/advantages to doing so.
This thread has gotten so long now that many of the comments and debates are repeated. And who knows - perhaps the whole structure of FIRST will change, and championships will no longer be what it has been. With the expected growth, we should definitely expect some changes.