Penalizing mecanum wheeled robots durring alliance selection.

[PayneTrain]

Originally Posted by AmoryG

I would actually argue the opposite. Teams have greater freedom to modify their robot during the off season because the rules are more relaxed and the robot isn't in a crate so you can make changes more easily. Teams can also put the competition into perspective and make a much more competitive robot.

Also, I'm talking from experience and I remember my team put a lot of effort into off season events. Maybe not all teams do, but my team competed like it was any competition and I'm sure many other teams have a similar mindset. Also I know some off season events are taken very seriously. IRI is the first one that comes to mind.

More professional sports analogies:

LeBron James can take the opportunity to retool the starting 5 he plays on when he calls up 9 of his closest contemporaries on the court for a rousing game of basketball at his house. While ESPN may want to carry the feed, the Elias Sports Bureau probably has better, more official things to do.

Even the FIBA Gold Cup is an event held by a major sanctioning body, but Anthony Davis' FIBA stats aren't coming up in the NBA books.

You want to bring up IRI? MLB doesn't count any statistics in official books for their all-star game either, even if some people walk home with special hardware.

If you want to challenge my anecdote of "not everyone is going out there with every resource they can muster to win the Alliterative Offseason of the week" with "my team does", that's your prerogative. Still doesn't make any of these events FRC-sanctioned events with any official meeting, which is the point Andrew was making earlier.

What was this thread about again?