[nobrakes8]

I read a bunch of the comments about 118 and I think quite a few crossed the line. I think it's OK for the community to be critical of each other and have these type debates but some of the youtube comments were just disrespectful and unconstructive. Our team had a chance to meet some of 118's mentors in Lubbock and we feel like we can email or call them anytime for help/advice/mentoring --and at the end of the day that's what FRC is about.

In Dallas we did have some people from the general public sit near us in the stands on Saturday and they asked me wether or not I thought team 148 cheated based off the quality of their robot (in Dallas the robots seem to drop off sharply in quality after best 5-6 teams every year compared to other regions). Their perception of FIRST is that it's a high school competition with robots built by HS students. Explaining to them that there are different philosophies with how teams define mentor and student roles was challenging and I don't know if they walked away with a good understanding (and in the case of 148 I have no clue how they operate so my answer was partially "you should go ask them"). In this case I wish there was a good short explanation regardless of personal opinion because it was a struggle to put together good answer.