[Frenchie]

Basic economics will tell you that if good teams regularly go unpicked, and poor-er teams get regularly picked, some day some team will boost up its scouting team, put together a killer alliance and win everything. The fact that this hasn't happened yet leads me to think that either the seeding system works so well that the top seeded teams do not really need exceptional partners to win, or that the scouting teams actually do a good job. Either way, this goes against your claim(s).

Also, teams shouldn't design their robot around the alliance. Knowing that a random process will get you your partner, you should design a robot that can win on its own. The fact that some robots go undefeated through the qualification matches either defies statistics or proves that a good robot will not be hurt by those matches. Also, a great robot that hasn't seeded too well (ex. 217 in the 2006 Det. regional) because they missed some matches or ran into technical trouble _will_ get picked in the alliance selection process.

Finally, as far as the whole mentor/student participation thing goes. It really leads nowhere. Many teams are mentor driven that swear they are not, many teams are not who are said to be, and there really is no right or wrong there. It bothers me however to hear people behind the scenes saying "team XXX is 100% mentor built" or "there is no way students did this". Don't assume, you would be surprised. I know for a fact that many of the top tier team see many of their students participate _heavily_ in the design process. I've seen entire systems on a robot put under the responsibility of one student (with the help of other kids to build and as much mentor help as he may ask for obviously...).

That is not to say that FIRST is perfect. Many things are wrong with it and enumerating them will not help because many of you will probably disagree with me.

Francois