Split Champs assignment

[Citrus Dad]

Originally Posted by nuclearnerd

I've already gone on record that I support* the move to bring more teams to champs, even if it means a championsplit. As much as we all love to see the best meet the best here, most students in FRC don't get anywhere near to the best teams from far away, so they won't care as much as we do. So shed a tear for the friends we'll miss, then welcome all of the new entrants!

That said, I am intrigued by the last paragraph of the announcement. It would be cool to have the culminating event be a televised, professionally produced TV series. You could have the Einstein finals be a best-of-7 series, with a few hours between each match to make repairs, changes, and work on strategy and be interviewed. It would be boring to watch live, but that wouldn't be the intent. Instead, the 8 hour day would be condensed into one or more 1/2 hour episodes for a mass audience, the same way they do for Battle Bots. The format works - lots more people around here know about Battle Bots than FRC, even though FRC is a vastly bigger program. Maybe FIRST could entice the same producers...

*Maybe a better way to put it is that I don't oppose the split. If there were a sane way to have 800 teams in one venue, and make things cheaper, I'd probably support that instead.

Problem: getting all of the teams together for yet another trip (especially if it's not externally funded) will be difficult to accomplish before the end of the school year. The biggest problem is the events on school calendars in May and early June. After early June is a non-starter because seniors will have graduated and often are immediately out of hand into summer activities.

The better solution is to properly structure the Super Regionals to turn them into different types of Championships. There's threads on CD that propose viable solutions. (I still haven't seen a rationale argument that the 2 events must be equally diluted other than it might hurt someone's feelings.)