[Gary Dillard]

Travis:

The scoring rules this year allow a team who has not even fielded a robot to captain the alliance who wins the competition. Quite simply, if noone on your alliance shows up with a robot, it is very likely that you will receive more points for the match than the other alliance, since you will get their total points scored while they will get those same points MINUS their penalty points, plus twice your score which is likely zero (since you can't score any points yourself without a robot on the field). If you continue like this, you could possibly make it into the top 8 teams, pick an alliance, and then declare that your robot is not able to proceed so someone needs to substitute for you while you still get to be the captain. That way you can have 3 teams on the field when it's only a win-lose problem.

The team next to our pit finally passed inspection at about noon on Saturday, made it to their last match but sat dead because they couldn't establish com's, and finished 8th seed (they were 5-4-1). They moved up to 6th during alliance selection, picked us (of course), then proceeded to sit dead on the field for eliminations (they actually established com's prior to each match starting but lost them immediately).

Your proposed rule change makes this even more of a certainty. Fix the root problem - make winning count something.