FRC Blogged - What Do You Think? The ‘Invite to Decline’ Strategy

[Travis Hoffman]

Originally Posted by FRC Blogged

Still, something feels not completely right to me about this. Maybe it’s because teams using this strategy are giving the appearance of wanting to have a team join their alliance, when that’s not their actual objective.

Maybe, much more likely, the #1 team would very much like to work with the teams they are picking, but they suspect those teams don't feel the same about working with them. Lovely. Well #1 has zero obligation to let "high-powered" teams form the alliances they want to form.

I see nothing wrong with putting lower-ranked alliance captains on the spot and forcing them to make a choice, even if some of those captains have explicitly asked the #1 team to not pick them or tried the reverse psychology "we'll decline if you pick us" ploy (it happens). That's almost a guarantee of a scorched-earth pick if I were in #1's shoes - if you play any kind of thinly-veiled condescension card, you is gonna get burned!

What I'd like to know is whether Frank decided to bring up this topic by himself, or if others shared with him their disdain for "Scorched Earth" strategies, and that prompted this blog post.