New FIRST competition structure in Michigan

[Jim Zondag]

A couple of more points inspection:

At Kettering, ALL the teams were rookies. Thus many of them had never been through inspection before. We needed more inspectors than normal at this event because of this fact. At the 2009 events we will not have so many rookies at any of the events. Over 90% of the teams will have experience and will have done this before. They should know what they are doing and be much closer to having a legal robot when they arrive.

One of the fundamental problems with Thursday in the current format is that for many, Thursday is not Practice Day, Thursday is Rework Day. Many teams show up and tear their machine apart. They do not go out to practice and instead they spend the whole day wrenching. Why do they do this?...because they can. Now, teams are going to have to put more priority being ready to play when they show up beacuse the whole idea of "we'll fix it on Thursday when we get there" will no longer be an easy choice. Teams will still have this same amount of time to rework if they want, but now they are doing it on their own time. In reality, this will likely make the inspection process easier, not harder.