People as Support Personnel in the Elims, How many is too many?

[thefro526]

Here's a question I'd like to pose to the people of CD, At the Championship How many Support Personnel is too many? At what point should someone put their foot down and say there are too many people out? Is it when team members are wearing the badges and media passes of other teams? Is it when other teams are helping there sister teams in the finals? You tell me.

I had a discussion with a very close friend of mine about this issue. We noticed During the Eliminations on Curie that there were a few teams that seemed to be growing in size behind the curtain. I thought the purpose of giving three Pit Crew Badges to each team was to control the amount of support personnel allowed on the Dome Floor.

I'm not saying that we all don't do this in some form or another, My Friend Shan From 612 was hanging out with our alliance during our strategy sessions, I believe he was using his team's media credentials. I know I've seen other teams do the same, but how many people from any one team be allowed on the floor?

Some people may find that there's nothing at fault with this but, one could make the arguement that a team with more support personnel could maintain their robot better between matches or fix something that would normally not be fixable during the time constraints of the Elimination Matches.

I'm not trying to attack any single team because then half of the teams in the Eliminations would be at fault here, I'm just trying to suggest that FIRST begin enforcing the number of people as support personnel. Usually, this isn't a problem at regionals, where teams can get behind the curtain and their pit is all of 10-50 feet away but I guess it could be an issue on that level as well. Also, can we please keep the discussion as unbiased as possible, and not attack any teams or people.