301 points! and could have done more

[BHS_STopping]

Originally Posted by dodar

Was the point of teams competing at the Arizona Regional to win the Blue Banner or to just win the $500? That's the difference.

I don't see any shame in the blue alliance admitting that they had a very slim chance to win, nor do I see any shame with giving thousands of spectators something different to cheer for in a final match. At that point, the crowd wasn't interested in who won or who lost; it was about seeing if Arizona teams, which people have been so fast to discount over the years, were capable of meeting such a difficult challenge. I guarantee that the crowd would have erupted had the blue alliance been able to score just 20 more points during the last match of the entire regional competition. We wouldn't have been cheering because we just watched 6 teams each win $500 towards next year's registration -- we would have been cheering because we, the FIRST community of Arizona, were given a challenge and met it.

I bet you, with a high degree of certainty, that if Steve Sanghi had presented the challenge without the monetary contribution, we would have seen the exact same thing happen.