Is it fair to hold Slots for Rookie teams.

[Nate Smith]

Originally posted by Mike Norton
I am saying If rookie teams want to get in. they have to do there homework before hand. You can not just jump in and say you want to play at the cost of others.
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Doing their "homework" and figuring out what FIRST is all about is one thing. However, as others have mentioned, actually getting the sponsorship and other means in place to make the ideas reality is something entirely different. FIRST has always said that one of their goals is to eventually expand to the point where every school in the country has a FIRST team. If they don't give an opportunity to those first year teams who are struggling up until kickoff to get things put together to compete, it would be counterproductive. After all, how good would it be for FIRST to be working with a team to get started, only to tell them, "sorry, since you didn't start early enough, you can't compete this year - better luck next year." Based on what I saw, at least 80% of registrations occur that first couple of days in September. The team I am currently working with was put together at the last minute their first year, even to the point of the engineers not meeting the students until Kickoff day. I feel that if FIRST did not hold slots for new teams, you would see the growth slow, and eventually stop entirely, as the growth to new events could not handle the # of teams that wanted to attend multiple events, so that by the time the new teams got organized, there would be no more room for them.

Originally posted by Mike Norton

If you plan on going to a regional that you know only have few teams in it. Then you show up and have many more team then when you expected. What is that saying about the game.

As far as this goes, what does it really matter? Based on what I can tell of the registration system this year, by the time the events get here, we will know exactly who and how many teams are attending, so what good will knowing the numbers before we even know what the game is help?