A quick disclaimer: I don't speak for the Robonauts, I speak for myself. Contents of this post are influenced by what I heard from my fellow mentors and students, but this is my opinion and you should not associate it with my team.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Sunshine
Well said
Maybe we'll stop hearing how it is not the field and it must be our robot. The anxiety that Dean and Woody experienced was a small fraction of what the finalists and other teams have been experiencing.
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This is the real reason I am so upset. It's not just that we didn't get to play, it's that we didn't get to play and FIRST blamed it on us. "There was a problem in SF2-1; there may or may not have been a problem with SF1-1." That sentence, said by the emcee, seems like it was targeted directly at 118, at least to me. It sounds like they decided that we didn't deserve a second chance, but they were giving it to us only to appear fair. I was livid in the stands when I heard that, and I probably made my team look bad with some of my angry screams (for that, I apologize). But to claim it was our fault, after what happened in Connecticut and how hard we worked to replicate 364's issues at Lone Star, was just unbelievable.
Furthermore, the commentary during the matches made it sound as if we had control over how immobile our robot was. There's a reason we nicknamed Archimedes the Eh Team beyond them being Canadian; they were really incredible, and deserved to be thought of as the A team, the best FIRST could offer. But from the commentary of the match alone, you'd think Curie was playing against a bunch of rookies. It was very derogatory. There was nothing FIRST could do about the connection errors (at least, that late in the season) or the schedule or even the tornado. The show must go on. But where FIRST went wrong was making it seem like the teams were responsible, and then actively ignoring our plight during match commentary. It was rude, it was unprofessional, it was about as opposite as gracious as you can get. That's where FIRST abandoned its values, and that's what FIRST needs to correct.
We as a community will do everything we can to help FIRST get the communication issues resolved. We will overlook what happened on Einstein in the name of science, and continue to recruit and spread the values of FIRST. But I personally will not stop expressing my opinion in forums such as this until FIRST apologizes for the way they treated the 12 teams on Einstein. Kamen just knelt by the side of the field and looked upset while watching the train derail, and then pretended there wasn't a problem when it came time to pass out awards. You cannot tell me that was the right thing to do. FIRST has never needed accountability before, but they do now. 16, 25, and 180 deserved the win, but the rest of the alliances deserved to play.