Special invitations to Championships from FIRST HQ?

[Grim Tuesday]

I was browsing the FRC subreddit and came upon this rather odd post.

http://www.reddit.com/r/FRC/comments...at_went_to_to/

The poster is claiming that their team got a special invite from FIRST HQ to attend Championships because of their OPR. It seems a exceedingly fishy and while they are not currently registered that is possible given the limited time. There are plenty of high performing teams not to qualify like 3173 and 624 that did not qualify that actually rank above them in max OPR as opposed to average OPR.

I would usually give a story like this little credibility until I see the letter from FIRST or them in St. Louis but a couple people noticed that that 217 is registered for Championships despite not qualifying based on any merit. Source.

A logical explanation is that the waitlist is no longer first come first serve but is instead judged on unknown criteria. I don't really know what to think of this.