Michigan, be honest, how is the district model?

[Jim Zondag]

My dream would be a semi trailer that would pull up, unfold into a playing field in minutes, minimal number of volunteers needed for scoring, queuing, being refs, and playing for several hours.

For 12 years, we have been doing exactly this in Oakland County Michigan with our OCCRA Fall Robotics League.
It really is pretty awesome that we can run a full robot tournament on a Wednesday evening: start setting up at 3:30, be packed and out by 9:30pm.
http://www.oakland.k12.mi.us/Default.aspx?tabid=535
We used a lot of the lessons we have learned on OCCRA over the past decade when we designed the FiM structure.

My fundamental point is we need to give the teams more and cheaper playing time.

Absolutely, teams build robots so they can use them.