A different perspective on disrupting coopertition bridge balancing

[bduddy]

So I, like all of you, saw the videos of teams attempting to prevent other teams from successfully balancing on the Coopertition Bridge. Like many of you, I'm sure, I was initially horrified that a team would do such a thing... but since then I've been thinking about it a little more.

In qualification matches, the "alliance" system creates temporary alliances between teams, but those teams are still expected to act, for the most part, in their own best interests (within the limits of gracious professionalism, of course). Most of the time, there is no conflict here: the team would like for the alliance to win, and so would every other team on the alliance. But the occasionally "interesting" way that FIRST handles tournament seeding and the like can disrupt this; recall the example of "6v0", or other examples of teams scoring on their own alliance. While it has occasionally made efforts to keep such strategies from getting out of hand, to my knowledge FIRST has never attempted to insist that teams should always avoid such strategies, or place the interests of their alliance or that of other teams above their own interests.
The coopertition bridge is another such example of a mechanism to shuffle around the seeding order. Although it may give each robot on the field an equal benefit in terms of points, the actual value of this benefit will be different to different teams. Some teams have apparently concluded that it would benefit them overall if that bonus was denied to everyone on the field, and have acted to try to deny it. How is that so different from scoring against your own alliance, for example? I find it interesting that FIRST made very strict rules against interfering with balancing on an alliance bridge, but none against interfering with balancing on the Coopertition bridge (this may change tomorrow, of course), so nothing that was done is against the rules. And although people can certainly disagree on whether denying a Coopertition balance is a good strategy or not, I don't see how it's so wrong for teams to try something that they believe will help themselves overall in the regional, even if it locks them too out of a benefit and goes against the temporary alliance system.

I'd like to see some discussion of this issue without the toxicity and other issues that were part of other threads about it.

P.S.: I don't approve in any way of the rumored behavior of certain teams in browbeating other teams, especially rookie teams, to not attempt to cooperate.

P.P.S: This is my personal opinion and I have not in any way consulted with my former team about it, so please put away your blacklists.

P.P.P.S.: When teams balance on the center bridge, they are "cooperating", not "coopertating" or whatever. "Coopertition" indicates the balance of cooperation and competition that is the entire game, while "cooperation" is what goes on on the center bridge. IMO, of course.