Do We have a trend here?

[Wetzel]

FIRST is here to inspire and excite kids (and adults too) about science.

FIRST has chosen to use a competition to do this.

So why is 5 rounds unfair? The teams in the finals have been through 6 or so more matches then teams in the quarterfinal. Teams that goto Na. The Championship in Atlanta will have been through at least one regional. Is it unfair to play more matches? If you want to determine who built the best robot, how is playing more unfair. If something wears out in that time, then it wasn't engineered for a long enough duty cycle.

The NCAA tournament. You have to play more games as you go on. If the team gets tired before another team, then the other team will win. The best will prevail and move on.

Like with the DARPA contest, the teams that failed early on didn't get far enough to run into the problems that teams later on ran into, but the collective knowledge and experiance from the challenge will allow the teams to do better next time.

Extra matches are not unfair, they are part of the challenge.

Wetzel