[JohnFogarty]

I was waiting for the FTC community to bring up things like this.
It's all completely true, and I'll avoid repeating what has already been noted. The FRC program will never be undermined by the FTC program, and that's an unfortunate fact. FIRST only meant for FTC to be a sort of bridge program into FRC, but obviously that isn't so much the case in our minds, case in point I had friends on FRC teams standing in the queue looking at the FTC fields going "How on earth did they get those little robots to lift things that high?!?" It's obvious there is an unexplored factor of FTC that most people haven't noticed yet.
Take a look at the reasons WHY FTC is rapidly expanding faster than FRC, well I'll give you my idea. THE COST. The FTC program is VASTLY cheaper to compete in and you still have all the versatility of an FRC robotics team. So why are we still the redheaded stepchild? I'm not sure, but when our numbers pass FRC's things might change.