[GaryVoshol]

Originally Posted by skippy178

I'm not against "teaching". I am against the idea that a well-resourced team with (relatively) massive amounts of sponsorship funding, mentors and facilities can travel around squashing the "little guys", who are the new rookie teams that Dean Kamen and others so desparately want to attract to this competition.

Whether you realised it or not, you saw it happen this weekend in Atlanta, where the highest ever team number to be a Championship Winner in the finals alliance was team 1114. That means there are over half the teams with numbers above that who have NEVER been to that dizzying level.

Looking at

http://www2.usfirst.org/2008comp/eve...in/awards.html

the Rookie awards were for teams 2352 and 2599, who are 1200+ team numbers AFTER those in the Winners alliance. How many years will it be before we see those teams being part of the winning alliances ?

J

Maybe 5 seasons from now, just like it took 1114 six seasons to get to where they are now? Or maybe far less. Do you realize that a rookie team was 2nd seed in Curie, and went on to the semi-finals, in which they won a match? And that a 2nd year team was in the Curie finals?

Originally Posted by dsm

It seems to me that you have a classic issue of "the rich getting richer and the poor getting poorer" -- and if that is a FIRST precept, then I must excuse myself and find another program to inspire students, because this one is clearly not for me.

I'm not sure where you get this. Rich teams get poor - at least one example was given in this thread. Poor teams get rich, by seeing what the rich teams do and emulating them. They go out and find more sponsors and mentors. They learn from the "rich" teams, most of whom are very willing to teach and mentor the other teams.

Originally Posted by dsm

I think the problem is not that the "Best Teams" excel, it is that in doing so, they often prevent "Pretty Good Teams" from excelling too. The answer is clearly NOT to keep the Best Teams from /going/ to additional regionals, because certainly they set an example of something to strive for, etc.

How can this be, since every "Best Team" that wins a regional does it with 2 other teams on their alliance?

Originally Posted by dsm

But the issue of how awards and Atlanta invitations are handled is a bit problematic, I think.

As it stands, I believe when a team wins a regional and already has a slot in Atlanta, their Championship slot is opened up to whoever happens to register for it first. This seems somewhat unfair to, for example, the alliance that just barely lost the last round of the finals at that regional. It would seem to make more sense if they awarded "deferred" slots (for lack of a better term) in some sort of logical order, rather than just randomly. After all, there are already open slots available for first-come-first-serve registration.

Please read the Championship eligibility criteria here: http://www.usfirst.org/community/frc...nt.aspx?id=944 - something that has been posted since last fall. Teams that didn't go to the Championships last year had equal opportunity to sign up and pre-pay for Championships this year. When the available slots were not filled, they opened up Championship registration to every team. The waiting list for Champs was formed only after the registration process was opened to all teams. As the teams qualifying from regionals were determined, those teams next on the waiting list were contacted to finalize their Championship registrations.

Originally Posted by dsm

For awards, if one of the Best Teams does a lot of Award X kind of work, for example, and wins that award at three different regionals, it again seems unfair to the runner-up Pretty Good Teams also striving for Award X. Maybe some clause should be included that once you win an award at a regional, you forfeit that award at any other regionals? Something like that?

Some might say that this now seems unfair to the Best Teams. Why shouldn't they get Award X at every regional if they deserve it more than the Pretty Good Teams? After all, they're the Best at X. My answer to that is that I personally believe that you should share the opportunities, and that you should strive (and strive hard) to beat your opponents, but not to crush and humiliate them -- that is how you can be "professional" and win, but still be a "gracious" winner.

There is no need to do a three-peat at regionals to prove you're the best at X -- that's precisely what the Championship is for, after all.

Hmm, 1025 won the Motorola Quality award at Detroit, one of the regionals where Rush competed. 27 won it at Great Lakes and at Atlanta. If the "best at X" theory holds, why did they not win it at Detroit as well?

Originally Posted by jasper.s.jacobs

there is no reason why teams should ever be limited in the regionals they go to no matter where it is. It would be quite different if someone like 1114 or 987 went to one regional every weekend just so they could beat the bejesus out of every team possible, but no one would want to do that anyway because it is way too time consuming. Regardless, limiting the regionals a team can go to ruins the competitive spirit of the game, and if rookie teams want it to be easier to compete then they shouldn't be in first in the first place; they should be striving to be the best they possibly can be. That to me at least is what first is all about.

also, there may be a reason that teams travel far to go to regionals, maybe they are looking to finding better competition, so they go to regionals where other teams go. I find it very hard to believe that a good team would travel a long distance just to go to a regional that would be easier for them to trample the competition.

Precisely.