When Does Age of a Team Not Matter?

[TheFish]

Hey guys,

So you might have seen my other thread about the best teams per rookie-year.

Now I want to talk about at what point you guys think it's appropriate to have similar expectations of teams regardless of their age.

For example, everyone knows that the rookie year is going to be a team's shakiest. They're just trying to get started and it is 100% understandable to not be an amazing team. And definitely in the second year of competition, a team still has a lot to learn and probably still has more work to do in terms of finances and mentors etc.

But now you look at a team like 1114. It's their 8th year of competition and I think it's safe to say that they have as high of expectations as any team to come out with an amazing robot (which they never fail to do... just look at what they did in 2008 in their 6th year), even compared to teams that have been doing robotics for 12+ years.

And then we can look at teams like 1625, 1717 & 2056 who have been in the game for 6, 5 & 4 years respectively. They have performed very well at Regionals and the Championship and I think it's safe to say that the FIRST community sees them as challengers on the "big stage".

So my question is this: for how many years do you guys subsidize your expectations of teams because of how long they have been around? Do you think that the top robots from the first few years of FIRST are still definitely the best teams around, or have younger teams stepped up and held their own?

Note: I clearly understand that different teams have different resources and in no way are age and experience the most important factors to success (see "What Makes a Powerhouse"). I am just trying to throw out a question for discussion.

-TheFish