Championships - Qualification Only Event?

[Siri]

Originally Posted by wilsonmw04

If the small and resource poor teams never get a trip to St. Louis, or where ever it’s held next, then FIRST will have failed that portion of their community.

Can I ask (and others have said this as well) why is the inherently true? I'm not saying it isn't...but why? Is it the dome? The VIPs? The shear number of teams? The presence of the other leagues? The added events (finale, Scholarship Row, etc)? The additional international teams?

I ask because on some level maybe what we need to do is recreate rather than expand that inspirational opportunity. For instance this year, a few rookie students were very clear that the Mid-Atlantic Championship was much more inspirational to them than Worlds. Now of course, it was earlier, we did better there, etc, etc. But I've heard similar comments about MSC as well. They're not Einstein, but they are most definitely inspirational. Why is never getting to go to Worlds, specifically, a failure of FIRST to those teams?