I'd say that designing/building/programming/utilizing a swerve drive in the off-season is a great way for students on any level team to work on their all around robotics skills. Get everyone involved, you can teach wayward freshmen the finer parts of manufacturing precision parts, your programmers get some new and very interesting "opportunities" (problems in disguise), and it is just a great way to build team work in general. Be sure to set deadlines though, our team (1625) tends to find as many reasons as possible to procrastinate when there are no actual deadlines set or impending on them. Once you have built said crab drive, be sure to never stop thinking of ways to improve it, make it lighter, more durable, more maintainable, anything to better it. Even if you don't wind up building one for next years game or it doesn't feasibly apply to the gameplay, your team will have walked away with invaluable machining experience and just experience in general in the ways of teamwork and comradery. Also be sure to have a few LAN parties to offset the idea that it's actually work
(that's what we do).