A quick suggestion:
Everyone needs to re-read
Ken Leung's post before they fire off a post that is based on a poor, or incomplete, understanding of the new qualification criteria.
Many of the above posts indicate that one point is being missed about the new system: under the new criteria, once a team attends the Championship Event they "go to the back of the line" (ie. reset to Tier 1) for the following year. Thus, teams will continually cycle through the tiers, bumping up one level each year until they attend again.
Historically, approximately 40% of the teams that eligible to attend the Championship actually choose to attend for any given year. Combine this with the prior point, and the projected growth rate in the number of FIRST teams for the next several years, and
do the math. You will find that every team should be able to attend the Championship at least once, and in many cases twice, within the four-year academic career of the student members of the team.
-dave