Big Bang - Less Bucks?

[jrukes]

Have any teams considered only competing in the post-season(PS) competitions this year?

Imagine a team was not competing in the 2002 competition because they could not raise the $12,000 they needed for the year. But, they have all the parts from the 2001 competition and they can get the official rules for the 2002 game from the web. Instead of not competiting at all, they decide to build a robot specifically for the PS tournaments. For the price of one FIRST regional, they could compete in almost all of the post-season events.

So here are some questions:

1) How would you feel about a team like this?

2) Do you have to compete at a FIRST regional in order to compete at a post-season competition?

3) How would the team miss out by not competing at a FIRST regional?

I understand that if every team tried this then there would be no FIRST. I am interested in hearing how people differentiate the two types of competitions, regular-season vs. post-season.

-Jason