[meaubry]

Joe,
In response to your comment "Contrary to how Mike explained it, there was no guesswork after asking around a bit."
I think I explained it very accurately and I even left wiggle room with a (?) after the word "guessing".
I appreciate that you are confirming that you had already asked and recieved a response from each team involved (27, 33, and 67) so the "guesswork" was eliminated.
I also had discussions with all 3 teams (in addition to 217) in order to determine if they would accept an offer from us in the #2 spot. Not knowing which way your team would go, we needed multiple alternative plans ready. It was very important for us to also have confidence in our 3rd thru 7th choices - not knowing how many teams you would chance forcing a decline from.
2 of the 3 said that they would accept if offered, 1 respectfully declined.
My motivation in asking them the question was solely to eliminate an embarrassing situation - as I stated earlier, I don't like putting teams in that situation under any circumstances.
Unfortunately for us, by these teams saying no to your team, they were also saying no to us.
I totally understand the rationale used and don't find it objectionable at all.
The number of really good teams were abundent at Great Lakes, and we chose 494 without any regrets at all.
We had a great time playing with them - even though things didn't quite work out so well for us.
Against the eventual champions, we won the first match pretty handily, but had some bad luck in the 2nd and 3rd matches. That also shows how deep of a field of robots attended the regional - all 8 of the alliances were very, very, competitive - without any being totally dominating.

Mike