Quote:
Originally Posted by ChuckDickerson
At least in the South, high school football is king. It’s all about Friday night and everyone (at least around here) keeps up with team schedules, scores, rankings, and highlights through websites like MaxPreps. I assume MaxPreps is popular elsewhere.
My question is should “robotics” be covered on MaxPreps like football, baseball, basketball, soccer, etc.? If so, how do we get MaxPreps to include competitive high school robotics? I would love to see a MaxPreps version of The Blue Alliance type stats and team data for scouting, etc. I would also think getting competitive robotics stats listed on MaxPreps would be a big step toward making FIRST/FRC/FTC/VEX/Best/etc. as recognizable as other mainstream high school sports nationwide. I know there is always a heated debate on Chief Delphi on whether “robotics” is a legitimate “sport” or not but MaxPreps currently covers cheer, dance, drill, and speech as co-ed “sports” so why not robotics? I would assert that in my experience with FRC, competitive high school robotics is at least as much of a sport as any of those. |
I think pursuing Maxpreps isn't the right way to garner mainstream acceptance. Maxpreps exists to satisfy a demand, and the demand for top-tier high school sports news is significantly higher than the demand for high school robotics news.
When I look around, I see higher quality content coming out of the woodwork everywhere. LookingForward gives insight to each week of competiton. GameSense has some really interesting content. The Blue Alliance catalogs results and ChiefDelphi covers everything else. The biggest problem I have with all of this content is that it isn't covered in a single place. Most of it is run through CD which IMO isn't the easiest to navigate, and which ends up burying useful resources under the sands of internet time.
I think a platform resembling Maxpreps would be useful for FIRST Robotics, an organized central hub of information, but I don't think that Maxpreps integration would really change anything since our competition changes each year
Also, take a look at the other sports Max-Preps covers besides football. Only the most popular sports in the country get real press time. I don't think Robotics can hold a candle to the national enthusiasm for those sports yet.