What would you do to improve the FIRST experience?

[George A.]

Originally Posted by Jake177

This is definitely an area where teams in a District system have an unfair advantage. I agree that keeping District teams from competing at a Regional would mitigate this, but I'm curious if there's a middle ground somewhere.

• How would your opinion change if District teams competing at a Regional were not eligible for the three qualifying awards (Chairman's, Engineering Inspiration, and Rookie All-Star)?
• What if a District team on a Regional-winning alliance generated a Wild Card Slot? In the current system, they are essentially taking up two Championship slots, one from the Regional and one from their home District's allocation. It seems like a Wild Card would be a reasonable way of awarding one of those slots to another deserving team at the Regional.

I actually feel like that's an amazing middle ground and one that wouldn't be too entirely hard to implement.

I realize that it is in the rules now that a team competing in a district can go to a regional after they have picked their first two plays (which I suppose is an unfair advantage as they have to wait until window 3 and see which regionals still have openings), but at the end of the day for the same $9000 they get 3 plays with exponential more opportunities to qualify for Championships over a non-district team which only gets 2 plays and only has a small handful of ways to the championships.

Having them ineligible for the "Big-3" (CA, EI, RAS) would mitigate this a bit and give more chances for local teams, and if a district team would allow for a non-district team to take their spot to Championships I think it would be a big step in the right direction.