Is this conjecture or is this from a position of knowledge? The entire decision-making process behind two championships is a giant black box to most of the public.
Of course they aren’t a unilateral decision, but pretty much all that we see that’s public facing from the board of directors is a list of their names and positions on the website. Frankly, for most of us, the “face” of any decision that happens above Frank’s level is the president of FIRST.
I understand you’re trying to add a dose of reality here. For those of us that put in hundreds of hours a year into this program and are pessimistic about the it’s direction, there isn’t much we can do other than hope that changes in executive-level management results in a change of trajectory.
Changing the championship structure, personally, caused me to leave the program for several years and, in my opinion, has been a contributing factor to a slow cultural shift in FRC that results in a worse student experience. If current executives at FIRST think that it is small-picture; then that is the sort of dismissive and/or out-of-touch attitude towards teams that we are hoping will change. This is why one of the first questions asked was ,“Has this person had experience on a team?”.