Split Champs assignment

[Nuttyman54]

Originally Posted by Jaci

<unpopular opinion>

2 Champs is great for teams competing internationally.

As an Australian Team, going to Houston instead of St Louis is going to make it multitudes easier for us to attend champs. Since we have a layover in Dallas Fort-Worth, it's going to take us less flight time to get to champs, and because of this cost-per-student is going to go down by multiple thousands of dollars.

I hate to say it but a lot of the opinions in this thread complaining about 2 Champs are only really from the POV of a team managed and run in the US, and to see the international teams from Australia, Israel, Brazil, China, Taiwan and more neglected in the conversation is kind of disheartening.

I know the split presents some issues with "fairness" of each Championship, but I won't get into the politics of that nor reveal my position on the matter. I'm simply here to put in my own point to show that the split is actually helpful in some way, especially to teams internationally who often find it hard to gather the money and support to make it to championships.

</unpopular opinion>

I appreciate your insight here, however this mostly stems from St. Louis not being a large US hub. Even for teams in the US, coming from the west coast usually involves a layover through Las Vegas, Houston or even Atlanta. There are many ways FIRST could have improved the travel situation for international AND domestic teams without splitting championship. Atlanta was far cheaper/easier for west coast teams than St. Louis was, and Houston should be an improvement as well.