I've seen people here talk about large robots that look beautiful that are supposedly "mentor built", but what about those not-so-great bots that are truly mentor-controlled?

I'm lucky enough that I don't know such a team, but from what I'm hearing, there are teams where the mentors take control of everything, and don't let the students do things. I've heard a bit about those (heard, I can't say it's 100% accurate) teams, and how nobody expects them to be mentor-controlled because their robots don't look like those of the teams people accuse of being mentor-controlled.

It reminds me of FLL, unfortunately. I participated for about 6 years, and have been judging and mentoring every year since. I remember there being 4 types of robots: One that is student-built, and clearly student built by the simplicity of it, one that is student-built but it's clear the students are experienced in FLL, one that is clearly mentor-built, with 4th graders who have a robot programmed in NXC (C-base language) and something more complex than most robots you ever see in your lifetime, and the final type, the hardest to find, one that's mentor-built, but looks like a student did it. In this final one, it looks like the students did it, but it's not too professionally done. It's clear the mentors did it when the students not only do not know how it was built, but admit to you it was the mentors, and when the robot that seemingly is average at best gets the high score, and the students don't know what happened.

While you may not see all of those types of teams in FRC, the point is to not look at a good-looking robot across from you and say it's built by mentors, when there's a possibility the students on the team next to you aren't getting very inspired.