Is competing at multiple regionals REALLY fair ?

[IKE]

Is competing at multiple regionals REALLY fair? Right Idea, but you are asking the wrong question.

Soapbox time: (Please read because I think I am stating a new point for this thread even though it is not new to FRC)
Does competing in multiple regionals make you better? For most of the teams that compete yes.
Should the awards be limited?
They currently are. For several awards you are only allowed to submit at 1 regional.
Should teams be limited by geography? This one is interesting to me being a Michigan team. For the last several years we have competed in only in Michigan. This year we went to Midwest.
End of the year results: 1 second place, 2 tech awards. We were the #2 pick on Curie (I take this to mean we had a strong team) where as a 2 time regional champion was not picked. Would it be "fair" to those starting michigan teams to have to go up against: 67, 27, 217, 47, ......... Not really if fair is defined by everyone have an even playing field. That being said you will hear no complaints from 2337. They were the #2 seed on Curie because they got some experience by going against those strong teams at multiple regionals.

How many kids would want to play soccer if they had to do drills for 4 hours a night and all day Saturday for 6 weeks just to get to play 1 soccer game that decides whether or not they get the opportunity to play a second soccer game. Not many.

The right questions that we should be spending our time on is how to get low budget teams to be able to compete several times.
How to get a $10,000 season to include 3 local events, maybe 1 or 2 large regionals, and then a national?
How can we set up these events to not have too much out of school time and too much time away from work?
How do we get every team up to the level of these marquis teams?
How do we get people to come and see these events? (as Dean always says, if they see it they will get it)

Let me take a moment to compare arguably the best robot and best competition team this year and compare them to a sports team (the model we were told we are trying to follow). These is only from the information I have read and from talking with them.

There machine is elegant. If you really look at it the machine itself is incredibly simply. Given a 1114 kit, most teams could get that made in 6 weeks. For football, most schools have enough atheletes to field a team. 1114 attended 3 events. Most high school football teams attend about 10 games. 1114 practices. Almost every high school sports team practices 4 or more times a week for 3+ months. By High School Sports team standards, they would just be an average team. Below average in many respects, and really only above average in terms of their success. My conclusion would be that it must be a pretty weak sport.

With 1500 teams nationwide FIRST is ready and needs to take the next quantum leap into figuring out how to truly give every student an opportunity to compete. IMO they have done this by having lower budget competitions Like FTC. If you don't have the budget to have a killer FRC team maybe FTC might be a better fit.

At one point in time having a full size basketball court and gym was considered an unfair advantage to High Budget schools. Now it is considered the norm. I would like those that feel that "high budget" teams have too big of an advantage to talk with those teams an you might be surprised by the number of these teams working very hard to reduce the price events and make them more readily avaialbe so everyone can compete at their level. If you don't beleive me stop by the pits of team 33 and talk to Jim Zondag. The arguments I present here are a lot of the arguments he has expressed to me. Look up pretty much any WFA winner from a team that has been around more than 4 years and hear what they have to say.

One task for low budget teams: review your situation and think hard about how you too can attend a second regional (Better use of funds, possibly comp and pitcrew only to 1 regional and everybody to the second, more sponsorship, better off-season fundraising). Read up on Chairman Award winning teams because the answers are usually there. Once you figure that out, the rest is easy.

My task for FIRST is to come up with a way to be more like a sport and not cost $20,000 to have a strong team. Their answer may very well may be FTC.

I am stepping down from my soapbox now. Thanks for reading and good luck.