Quote:
Originally Posted by GeeTwo
Wow, what a shift in topic!
For the past few years, FRC has has picked up on sports analogies as a means of inspiration by making the games rather sportlike (half have balls, and most have defense), and has supported worldwide integration and sports-hype through the crowning of a single championship alliance each year.
This year, the game is definitely non-sports-like. I had accepted this as an anomaly, a one-year-in-four placement (rather than throwing) game. The introduction of two separate championships looks like a solid step into systematically diluting the competition aspect of FRC.
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When the two season finale event plan first came up around a student I was talking with, I first had to convince him that it was really true. He didn't believe me.
When I finally convinced him that there would be no world championship in 2017, his response was "Don't they understand that this is a sport?"
As I have said elsewhere, I don't have a real opinion on whether or not we should have a world championship. (I refuse to even discuss the possibility that we will have two world championships. That's self contradictory.) I can see why cost factors and school schedules might make a single world championship impossible as First grows. I don't know of any other high school competition that has a world championship, and not many have national championships, for exactly the same reason. Those calculations involve too many factors for me to weigh in on.
However, I do have an opinion on the sporting aspect. I think it's very important to maintain the sport connection, and to treat FRC as a sport. I think that's why it works. I'm hoping the 2016 game goes back to something more sport-like.
As for having a single world championship versus two - - league championships? Sports fans, and players, like world championships, and that should be one factor, but only one, in the decision.
I think the final decision should be driven by consideration of a recent slogan associated with First. "Make it loud!" Make it loud enough that people who aren't present in the stadium will notice it. That's why I've ended a few posts lately with "think outside the walls."