Success of the #1 Seeds at the Championship Event

[Karthik]

Originally Posted by Elgin Clock

Anyways, how did Nationals work back in the day, for my personal knowledge and all others who are curious?

In the post-alliance era, 1999 and onwards, there were only two years without divisions, 1999, 2000. During these two years, the top 16 teams would draft their alliance partners from the entire field of competitors! In 1999, this field was 207 teams, while in 2000 it was 268 teams.

As you can imagine the scouting process was immense. There were just too many teams to scout. It was nearly impossible to collect information on all the teams. As a result many top teams felt as though they were overlooked. The other major issue was that only twice as many teams made it to the elimination rounds as a regional, yet the number of competing teams was anywhere from 3 to 8 times as large as a regional. Because of this many teams left EPCOT feeling a little empty handed.

So after much discussion, FIRST adopted it's current division setup. The new system ensured that you only had to scout 70-75 teams, a much more reasonable number. And that approximately 1/3 of the teams made the elimnations rounds. A quite desirable ratio.

I would hate to have run my strategy operation under the 1999 constraints ever agin. It was quite the chore back then.