Championships - Qualification Only Event?

[Mark Sheridan]

Originally Posted by SamMullen

I feel that is somewhat antithetical to FIRST's intent. Part of the point of the Rookie All-star and Engineering Inspiration awards is to send as many people to championships for what they do off the field as are sent for what they do on the field. Eliminating the qualifying nature of these awards would shift FIRST's focus more towards the competition and the robots, which is something FIRST does not seem to want to do.

I agree that eliminating the championship eligblity of the EI award would focus more to the competition. I just wanted to address the hypothetical situation of a EI award winner with a sub-par robot. I think that there are better ideas than this one. The EI award does have many merits that warrants its celebration.

The rookie all-star on the other hand is a strictly on the field performance award. With it going to the highest ranked rookie, it takes no input of the teams off the field actions. There scenarios where I could see a really good rookie team should go to the championships, especially considering what happened in San Diego (really cool by the way). However, in the case where a rookie team merely seeds higher than the other rookies and seeds poorly relative to the rest of the field, I feel there are more deserving teams that should go to the championships.