Serpentine Draft Alliance Parings, Like/Dislike

[bduddy]

Originally Posted by Martijn

The serpentine system definitely helps to even out the different alliances, thereby creating more interesting finals. However, the unfortunate thing is that not always the best teams end up making it to the georgia dome. For example, we were the 3rd seeded team, and then we picked team 1771, and 1999. Unfortunately our alliance only reached the semi-finals. But i feel like 1771 deserved to go to nationals with their robot this year. On the other hand its also no fun to have one alliance which just dominates the elimination rounds. Perhaps there could be a 6th team at every regional which could go to nationals every year. Like a robot picked by the judges, which they felt deserved to go to nationals in addition to the winning alliance, to the rookie all-star team, and the chairman's award winners.

There already is a judges' award, and I think it would be a great idea to possibly let the team awarded it to go to Nationals. I'm sure there are many teams that aren't Chairman's material, aren't rookies, and don't fall into the EI Award category that deserve to go anyway. This would be optional, though: the judges would only give the award if they felt there was a team that truly deserved it. (Isn't the award already optional?)