This is an interpolation of travel times for teams based off numbers pulled form OpenStreetMap. All teams with a road connection to the champs were considered (yes, including Canada and Mexico). The resulting image shows travel times only and does NOT TAKE INTO CONSIDERATION TEAM DISTRIBUTION. So before you get all up in arms against FIRST hatin’ on the west coast consider the mean center of the teams in this analysis: https://i.imgur.com/GlKrHiu.jpg
… And that’s why we had one Worlds in St. Louis from 2011 - 2016.
It is interesting to note that path of “it doesn’t matter which champs you attend” runs through ~4 major metropolitan areas (Portland OR, Kansas City MO, Memphis TN, Atlanta GA). Furthermore, this is approximately the path the 2017 eclipse took across the US.
Is there a distribution of #2champs that makes more sense based off road travel times alone? I will be looking into that in the weeks to come.
Keep in mind I am only looking at a single variable here: road travel times. There is also hotel cost, food, flight cost (which varies wildly between airports), venue suitability/cost, etc.
I made it colorful to grab you eye… hey look, it worked ;).
Would be really nice to see a map based on Champs assignment. We in NC would love to travel ~14 hours to our Half-Champ and not the ~22 that we currently travel. Same for the other weirdly assigned regions I imagine.
From my vantage point your +/- band does not go through the Portland Metro area and I’d even say that the northern boundary is closer to the greater Seattle Metro area than the southern boundary is to the Portland Metro area. (Note for many people from this area, including me, Tacoma is considered part of the Seattle Metro Area and Vancouver WA is part of the Portland Metro area)
I think this already kindof exists somewhere. It is something I could do with my data, I will put that thought on the backburner.
As far as NC assignment is concerned, if you look at a map of team distribition of North America you will see that it is HEAVILY bias towards the NE quarter of the continent. My best guess is in order to even out the teams attending each championship they had to effectively fudge that line of “equal time to both champs” toeards the NE. Which forced NC into the further away champs. Whan you look at the spatial split on my map there are 2263 teams th the Detroit region and 1054 in the Houston region (Not including international teams for Houston). So yeah, Detroit and Houston are not Ideal locations to serve North America as equally as possible with regard to travel time.
We may see different results if the interpolation is weighted based on champs attendence frequency per team.
I was being super approximate, but point taken, my time in the PNW has been severly limited.
I may give that a look in the next week, but honestly it will look rather similar to Indy-Vegas (even if you included airfare in the model).
Presently the best I have found (for drive-times only) is Charlotte & Denver. This services the whole continent rather well.
Factoring cheep airfare into the equation (figuratively, I do not have this model created) Indy-Vegas may be possible (But Minnesota teams are kinda hurt by that as it places them in Vegas - a much longer drive or ~$100 airfare 1 way per person. )
Absolutely not, we do not need this dichotomy between the regional and district models. Furthermore this kills the very geographic nature of the problem and really starts to make FIRST like the big 5 football conferences; horribly inefficient with travel & throwing money at the problem.
Ok, there is a limited number of cities on the “east side” that have a convention center and a stadium within walking distance, so keep that in mind. But I’m down to give this combo a shot.
)
