I have been lightly following this thread and its parent (it is time consuming to follow it in depth). One word keeps coming to mind when reading the arguments but I haven't heard anyone say it. I searched that word in both threads and no results. The word I am thinking of is:
parity
If I can just steer the discussion ( aka threadjack
) a bit and ask:
Do we need parity of competitive skill in FIRST?
If we need it, how would we go about achieving it?
I'll hold my opinions on those questions for a bit because I'm interested in other people's opinions on this. Here are a few of my subjective observations on parity. Parity does seem to vary significantly by game. The 2005-present 3 robot alliances seems to increase parity over the 2 robot alliances.
The NFL believes it needs parity for its fanbase, does FIRST need parity for inspiration?