2004 Championship Eligibility Criteria!!!

[SarahB]

Originally posted by Andy Baker
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)

While I agree that as FIRST grows there won't be enough room for even 1/4 of the teams to compete at Nationals, I don't think your numbers can be taken at face value. Some of the teams that qualify might not be able to go due to lack of money or other reasons. For example, our school district won't let any clubs go to Nationals/Championship unless they win(in our case a regional). With our luck I can't see us doing that anytime soon so we would never use our spot. Also, many teams from outside the US would never be able to go as most school districts are very cautious about letting their students travel outside the country. Keeping that in mind, I'd think that at most 3/4 of the teams would be able to actually go.