FiM is NOT FIRST

[Cory]

The really stupid part about FiM to me, is that the model is clearly centered around the competition. It's focusing more on the robots, and the competitive experience by rewarding robot performance more than other aspects of FIRST.

Now I don't necessarily have an issue with this, because I like competing as much as anyone else, but I see where people have complaints.

The reason I think that it's stupid is because in most states besides MI, what is going to happen is the district system will actually make the competitions far worse. Teams from outside the area will not be able to travel to an event, and you'll see the same old group of teams. In areas without many strong teams, this will mean events that are super boring, or consistently dominated by one good team.

As to the point of "what do we do when we have 10,000 teams and can't use the current model?" well...let's just say I don't see that happening anytime soon. It's taken the better part of two decades to get to around 2,000 teams. FIRST management is completely delusional if they think there's a snowball's chance in hell of EVER having a FRC team in every school in the country, or even 50% of them.

What FIRST ought to be doing is figuring out how to prevent 15-20% of their teams from dropping out of the competition every year, instead of worrying about their growth rate. What good will it do to have 10,000 teams who barely have a clue and are just scraping by versus 2,000 teams that are actually sustainable?