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Re: Why Give Open Bids to the Championship?
Coming from a location that is just about as far from Atlanta as a team can get....(except the Hawaiian and Alaskan teams and the foreign teams...) I can speak to the issue of trying to get an "open" spot in November. It allows us to make our plans in advance.... to raise airfare from Seattle for our team is a huge undertaking.
The other side of the coin is that we have qualified 6 times in the last 4 years by virtue of Regional Wins, Rookie All Star, EI or RCA so we have always "won" our way in too.
But laying that aside..... the Championship was never designed to bring all the best robots together and decide on who is best... Just look at the way we pick alliances... we never get the 3 BEST robots on one alliance anyway... FIRST is designed this way....
Get over it.... Winning the championship is a lot of fun... but in many ways it is just like a regional... Does anyone out there actually think that the 3 best robots win ANY regional? Of course not... Alliance picking breaks up the best robots...
I love the way we do this... and our team has been on the receiving end of a regional win and on the other end too...we have won when we were definitely NOT one of the best robots on the field....I will cite an example... in our first year in Las Vegas we were a decent robot but we got picked 24th by the #1 alliance....(Thank you 254 and 1425) As part of that alliance we went on to win... other things have happened too... I have seen GREAT robots not win a regional for many reasons...
FIRST CHAMPIONSHIPS is about inspiring teams.... it has NEVER been about bringing the best robots there...
Would you really like to have something like what they do for the NCAA championships? Can you even imagine how hard it would be to try and pick the best robots? Come on...
Championships started as EVERYONE going.... now about 1/3 can choose to go...
Think about this... if you really wanted the Championships to be about the best robots... first of all you would not have the support of FIRST....
(It is NOT about the robot...)
second... you would have to have someone else pay for transportation and lodging and the registration fee for every team...
otherwise teams that could simply not afford to go still couldn't go...
I like the system.... every year we have won our way in... but other than our rookie year... we could sign up and do the work necessary to go... and still let other teams that are on the waiting list get in because we won our way in...
I like the system...I like FIRST...working in it inspires my students...
it motivates them to be the best that they can be....
thanks for listening... I hope to see you on the field!!
or in the pits...
R
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