[Chris Hibner]

Joe Ross beat me to almost everything I was going to post. Almost everything...

Here are a few ways things changed:

-Prior to 2000, you took your robot home with you after each competition and kept it until Tuesday at 5 p.m. You were free to do whatever you wanted with your robot during this period.

-In 1997, the base size limit was 36 x 36. As you can imaging, that made it very difficult (if not impossible) to get the robot through a standard door, so FIRST changed the size limit to 30 x 36 starting with 1998.

-Robot height was limited to 48 inches in 1997, 1998, and 1999. The current 60 inch limit started in 2000.

-2001 had a HUGE change, and I'm not talking 4 vs. 0. I'm talking the beginning of divisions at the Championship Event. Prior to this, you had 200+ teams in one GIGANTIC competition and you somehow had to scout all of them so you knew who to pick. Back then there were 16 alliances in the eliminations at the Championship.

-2002 was the first year of the current single-coach system. Prior to 2002, there were two coaches per drive team.

-From 1999 through 2003, wins and losses were not counted in qualifying - it was all via qualifying points. The ranking points were as follows:
1999: winning alliance qualifying points is 3 times their own score in the match, losing alliance QP is their own score (no multiplier).
2000 and 2002: winning alliance QP = losing alliance score x 3. Losing alliance QP = losing alliance score.
2003: If my memory serves me right, Winning alliance QP = Winning alliance score + 2 x losing alliance score. Losing alliance QP = losing alliance score.

-Prior to 2003, there used to be "qualifying robots" and "elimination robots" (no, each team did NOT build 2 robots - I mean this in a strategic sense). Because of the QP system based only on loser's score, teams would typically decide if they wanted a high scoring robot that could manipulate the loser's score (i.e. a "qualifying robot"), or a team that could just win matches and not worry about the score (an "elimination robot"). Just to be clear, there was no rule, it's just that team figured out that various robot designs were better suited for quals or elims, but not usually both.

-Due to the above "qualifying"/"elimination" robot scenario (it was often the case that the good qualifiers were ill suited for the win/loss/score-doesn't-matter eliminations) there was a lot of talk on these boards how we wanted the eliminations and qualifying to reflect the same strategy. In the biggest "what, that's not what you wanted?" move of the century, FIRST made the eliminations just like qualifying, by having you play two matches and whoever had the most QPs after the two matches advanced to the next round.

-Following the above elimination SNAFU everyone on these boards said, "wow! you really misunderstood what we wanted - we want quals to be like elims, not the other way around. What we meant is, make qualifications be wins and losses - just like the eliminations should be wins and losses." Thus, the current qualification ranking system was born in 2004.

-Of course, 2002 was the last year at Disney World's EPCOT. 2003 was in Houston for a single year and 2004 was the first year in Atlanta.

Wow, that was a lot longer than I thought. If I can think of anything else, I'll post it.