Why Give Open Bids to the Championship?

[GaryVoshol]

Originally Posted by Bob Steele

//snipped for brevity - but go back and read all that good stuff...

Repped.

Several years ago FRC had a multi-tier system for CMP pre-registration. Teams who had not gone for the previous 3 years could sign up immediately. The reasoning expressed for this was that FIRST wanted every student to experience the CMP sometime in a 4-year FRC career. Then a week later teams that had not gone for 2 years could enroll, then teams that had not gone the prior year, and finally open registration.

But as I recall it turned out that not many teams signed up in those first couple weeks. If your team had not attended for at least 3 years, you probably weren't making plans to ever attend. It was likely a financial issue or school travel restrictions. So they made the current two-tier system.

Another factor is that Atlanta (and presumably St. Louis) can accomodate more teams. A perusal of the archives shows 291 teams were in Houston in 2003. There are now somewhere in the neighborhood of 340-350 teams. Even with more regional events, that's still an increase of open slots.