Is competing at multiple regionals REALLY fair ?

[skippy178]

My main point is that a team competing in multiple regionals shouldn't be able to take home awards everywhere they go just because they have the $$$ to do so, and at the expense of the smaller-budget teams. Once they go to their first regional competition, it should become "practice only" (non-qualifying) at other events, and that should include being ineligible for the off-field awards too.

If every team could find a way to attend 2 or 3 regionals, especially if they were geographically convenient to home base, wouldn't that give them a much better (perhaps unfair) chance of qualifying for the Championship than if they competed locally, and then sat around for 4-6 weeks waiting for Atlanta (assuming you were pre-qualified) or else were eliminated and had to wait for next year to try again.

What do the top NASCAR / F1 / Indy teams do between races ? They spend time and money on practice, and practice, and more practice, and throw in plenty of workshop time too (without fix-it windows !). But, regardless of all that, they can't go out and add a few extra races to their season to give them more points in their championships.

In professional sports, the teams get a given match / event schedule, and over the course of the season up the finals rounds, each team will play the same number of games.

In FIRST, that's not the case. But, should it be ?

J