2004 Championship Eligibility Criteria!!!

[Andy Baker]

Originally posted by Jon Reese
i think that teams should at least get to go every 4 years so that at least once during your high school time on a team(granted your on it 4 years) you get to go to nats. every one should get to go at least once!

So, with that mentality the Championships will include 1/4 of the total number of FIRST teams. Let's look at the numbers.

Throughout the years, FIRST has grown at about a 30-40% rate. If we conservatively assume that this growth rate will decrease to 20%, then the Championships will be this big in the coming years:

2007: 518 teams at Championships (2073 total teams)
2011: 1,075 teams at Championships (4300 total teams)
2015: 2,229 teams at Championships (8916 total teams)

(warning, sarcasm mode: on)

Wow... won't that be fun! In eight years, the Championships will be almost 10 times as big as they were last year in Houston. Golly, someone is going to have to build a REALLY big facility to host this event... 'cause we all deserve to go!

(sarcasm mode: off)

Seriously, you guys... look at the numbers. You simply cannot make the arguement "all teams should go". Hosting an event with 50 or 60 teams is not especially easy to do. I cannot even fathom hosting a competition with 500 teams, let alone 1,000 or 2,000. You guys are smart enough to build robots, you need to be smart enough to figure this capacity thing out.

I don't like being harsh, but maybe this will clear things up.

Andy B.