Making heads or tails of the new announcement...

[Matt Leese]

The more and more I think about this announcement the more and more I dislike it. The number one problem I see with it is that it creates a group of "elites" who will always get to go to nationals (whether through the automatic perenial qualifiers or just always having a good robot). This leaves out a lot of teams. And a good number of these teams are going to feel a lot of anger and hate to these "elites." While this does already happen to an extent, it will only be extenuated by the fact that these "elites" now get special priviledges (guaranteed a spot). This will just increase the antagonism among teams. And this will be particularly profound among rookies and it will have a tendency to drive them away. Just another set of problems I see with the decision.

Matt who wishes it was purely random as that would remove any favoritism....