I'm going to take a moment to reflect on this situation as a means of seeing a forest for the trees at the macro-level, and not solely based upon the merits of the specific FRC District Model at the micro-level. So bear with me for a (somewhat) short moment.
Before you read anything else in this post, read the question below, then think about it for at least 30 seconds in your head before reading anything else. Consider it exercise to get the creative thinking juices flowing again, as they tend to coagulate during the non-build-season times of the year. ;-)
How did a car end up in nearly every driveway in America?
No seriously, think about this before you continue reading with the same fever as when you saw your first-ever FRC Game Hint!
Okay, that wasn't so bad, was it?
So how did a car end up in nearly every driveway in America? It certainly wasn't by taking a $10,000 Cadillac, replacing a few shiny chrome and brass parts, and shaving 20-30% of the list price. Rather, it was when Henry Ford's greatest innovation, the modern assembly line, was able to drastically alter how cars were made, for a fraction of the price. $300 for a Model T put car ownership into the realm of possibility for most of America.
Now please don't take this the wrong way, for I mean no harm, but it's always seemed to me that the FRC District Models are taking the eliminate-shiny-brass-from-Cadillac method. On the whole, it's still a Cadillac, just not as shiny, but still easily costs thousands upon thousands of dollars to buy one.
If our goal is to genuinely put a FIRST* team into the majority of schools in America, should we take the eliminate-shininess-of-Cadillac route or should we take on the Henry-Ford-style-innovation route to put a FIRST presence in most schools?
Most rational people would not call Henry Ford elitist because he was able to put an inexpensive car into the hands of most Americans. But last year, I was repeated called elitist for suggesting a similar Henry-Ford-style method for growing the FIRST program - the FIRST Tech Challenge. (Also the Vex Robotics Competition, if our goal is to increase STEM awareness and not just expand the "FIRST-brand-name". But that's another discussion for another day).
The FIRST Tech Challenge costs a fraction of what even District-Style FRC costs, for teams, for events, for sponsors, for everyone. If our goal is to genuinely put FIRST into the majority of schools, this is how we will do it.
For less than the price of a FRC control system, you can run at least one FTC team (including registration, most expenses, and materials costs) for a year. Think about that.
While the Districts are great for reducing internal costs for FRC teams, as well as running cheaper events, this isn't the method that will get FIRST in every school. FTC/VRC is that solution.
Now last year I brought up this point, a bunch of people attacked this idea as [paraphrased] saying "why should we even have FRC in the first place if FTC is so good?" This argument is a classic case of misapplying a macro-level concept to a micro-level concept. This kind of argument makes as much sense as saying "why do we need airplanes (and/or high speed trains) when you can drive anywhere in the country?"
Think of FIRST like a pyramid. At the base, we have FLL and JFLL. This is the foundation of the program, as well as the largest group. It's versatility, inexpensive nature, wide age range, and general small team size easily makes it the largest possible program. This group largely learns and is inspired through self trial-and-error of building/programming their robots, as well as their research project. It's also the cornerstone of FIRST, providing for a solid base of inspiration starting at a young age.
Moving up the pyramid, we have the middle group - FIRST Tech Challenge (also Vex Robotics Competition). Right now this market is largely untapped. There exists huge potential for growth in this area. This group in general is slightly older than FLL, and slightly younger than FRC, but heavily overlaps both areas. This group learns and is inspired through a mix of self-learning through trial-and-error and a more active mentorship to teach students about more advanced topics, such as gear trains, torque, etc. The costs for FTC/VRC are more expensive than FLL, but less than FRC, so the number of FTC/VRC teams would generally be less than FLL but more than FRC.
At the very top of the pyramid, is FRC. Like the light shining for dozens of miles from a seacoast lighthouse, FRC is the guiding light of FIRST. FRC is the program that everyone looks to for inspiration and guidance. This program specifically deals with older, high-school students, and by it's very nature necessitates a much larger amount of mentor involvement to be successful. Because of the increased costs, this program isn't economically feasible to put in the majority of high schools, but rather best suited for rather large team sizes with students coming from all over.
A heavily-biased FRC District Style growth model will probably be able to achieve maybe a 10-20% (at most) market penetration into high schools across the country. But a more balanced model of FTC/VRC and FRC would easily be able to make it into nearly every high school. In fact, as of this writing, several states, such as Connecticut, Massachusetts, and Rhode Island, are in the process of getting either a FTC/VRC team into every high school in their states, which is quite a large task. Unlike what most people assume, we still have large rural/agricultural areas up here in New England - we're not all one giant Boswash megalopolis.
But why am I skeptical about the growth potential of slightly cheaper FRC? Connecticut, as most people know, is the richest state per capita in the nation. (Please don't take that as being snobbish, it's not, it's simply the facts. The majority of people in "Da Cutt" don't wear popped collars or drive their parents convertibles to their yachts. Most people in Connecticut are average people). Getting on with my point, Connecticut has 169 towns/cities and no unincorporated land left. Not every town has a high school, but some cities have two or three high schools. All in all, I'd estimate FRC market penetration at about 20% in CT.
For about the last eight or so years, the number of teams in Connecticut has been relatively steady, around 30-35 teams. let's assume that an average FRC team spends $20k, and a district level competition will shave 25% off total costs ($5k in this case). This means that instead of a cumulative total of $600k-$700k supporting 30-35 teams, we could have about 40-46 teams with same amount of money. This could increase market penetration to about ~23%-27%. Not a particularly large growth amount.
(And remember, this would be near the top end of what most other states could accomplish. We have lots of high-tech companies in the area (especially in Central Connecticut and the Worcester-Boston-Manchester triangle, and our state is small enough that even the remotest of remote rural areas aren't more than a 45-60 minute drive from our urban/industrial centers).
But why has the number of teams here remained steady? Even in the richest state per capita, we have a hard time attracting enough sponsors to support a significantly larger number of teams. If teams get innovative and an over-arching entity imposes "regulations" to guide funding sources more efficiently to teams who need it the most, we could probably pull in another 10 FRC teams. But such a system may meet philosophical resistance from some teams and people, despite actually benefiting the state's FRC teams in the long run.
So what do we do? FTC/VRC. Being a lot cheaper, we can much easier foot the bill to spread out to virgin STEM schools and start inspiring their students, while continuing to help our current FRC teams through this economic recession. Using these programs, we'll most likely easily get a STEM competition into nearly every school in our state. AND THAT IS OUR GOAL, TO GET S.T.E.M. COMPETITIONS INTO EVERY SCHOOL.
In the end, this all boils down to exactly the same lesson we are learning from this recession about always expecting continuous postive economic growth, continuous growth of housing markets, continuous market growth for financial derivatives and sub prime mortgages, etc. Expecting these to continue growing forever is foolish. Expecting FRC to continue growing forever is also foolish. There will be a limit, not a hard limit but rather quite fuzzy one, where even the inexpensive District-Style FRC will simply be unable to pass.
Not everyone can afford a Cadillac. Not everyone can afford a million dollar McMansion. And the important thing to realize is that there is no shame in this.
There is no shame in not living a million-dollar Paris Hilton lifestyle. But there is a lot of shame in trying to live beyond your means. And right now, I think FIRST is trying to make the same mistake our economy made, and trying to invent new means to live beyond our means to continue our opulent lifestyle instead of realizing there's no shame in seeking less glamorous but more sustainable growth. And just like how our economy came all crashing down to correct our errors, if we try to overstretch FRC, market forces will eventually "correct" us whether we like it or not into a more sustainable fashion.
So Mr. Wise Aleck, since you seem so smart, what's your solution? If the decision was up to me, I'd put a significant portion of the effort and capital (both money and man-hours) that could be used into creating new district-level competitions into vastly expanding the middle-tier programs of FIRST Tech Challenge and Vex Robotics Competition, while still keeping a modest effort to continue growing FRC (for large portions of the country, I don't think we are near the economic limit of number of sustainable FRC teams). I'd also create a new campaign, one using the lessons learned from this recession, to be more humble with it comes to growing our program. No longer would pure growth "We started 7 teams!" be rewarded as the end-all-do-all, but rather "We created or saved a total of 7 FRC teams and 12 FTC/VRC teams, for a total audience of 300 total students." Sure, it's not as catchy, but it's vastly better for long term sustainable growth. I also wouldn't penalize regionals such as Michigan for trying new models and methods (such as district-level competitions) to internally reduce their costs, but would make it known that actions like devaluing cultural awards over technical awards is highly discouraged.
(Although I don't have definite data to prove it, I'd guestimate there is a pretty strong correlation between the number of engineers on a team and number of technical awards won. This isn't a bad thing, as the idea of engineers and students working together is one of the basic core values of the program, but FIRST is primarily a vehicle for changing the culture, not bolting pieces of metal together. Even if the culture changing awards are usually won by the teams who win technical awards, it's the philosophical meaning behind them that necessitate their continued stay inside FIRST. And it's not an either-or situation, supporting the culture awards does not have to detract from the technical awards. They can both easily co-exist).
And for the teams who want to get more bang-for-their-buck, and have the chance to compete in more matches for cheaper amounts of money, I would give them strong encouragement to start literally DOZENS of off-season competitions in their area. Let local teams run these events, and use them as a fundraiser to help fund their team. A great example of this system is here in the Northeast. There are literally over a dozen off-season competitions within a six-hour drive of almost anywhere in the Northeast. Most of these are small, and with registration costs ranging from $50 to $350, they represent a HUGE bargain. It's not uncommon for a team in the Northeast to attend up to a half dozen off-season competitions from May through November. Many teams around here are year-round teams, and continue meeting the entire year. And with this system, we help both other local teams raise money to fund their programs, as well as have the ability to compete in dozens upon dozens of matches at very little cost.
* FIRST DOES NOT EQUAL FRC!!!