Cheesecake Factory

[RoboDawg]

Something I saw at the 2015 Championship has been bothering me and I would like some feedback from the CD community. I saw a HOF team set up what amounted to the equivalent of a production line outside of their allotted pit area. The area covered at least two normal pit stalls worth of real estate. They worked on their robot and built, what I assume, was cheesecake for their alliance.

I understand the cheesecake phenomena and my personal opinions are not favorable. But the current rules do not seem to exclude or eliminate its use. My issue is with the violation of a rule (pit sprawl) that was brought to the attention of various FIRST personnel. I don't know if anything came of this.

There are multiple reasons for limits on a teams pit size. The limits on team members in a pit constrains the amount of work a team can do. When they sprawl, large teams have more manpower to do work in a short period of time. This puts small teams at a disadvantage.

Due to limitations of my mobility for this Championship I could not get around to all the divisions. Was the incident I witnessed just one or did other people see this kind of behavior? I know that for a lot of people winning on Einstein is the penultimate. Does this desire excuse rule violations?