[David Brinza]

Opposing alliances making agreements to not attack tall (7+) human player stacks is clearly not consistent with the spirit of competition I've witnessed in other FIRST events. Within 30 seconds of the start of human play in the first match where this occurred, I felt something was very wrong. Upon seeing two immense undefended stacks on either end of the field with no attempts made to attack them throughout the game, I thought: "No way this isn't rigged!!" An outsider to FIRST would wonder whether this really was an exhibition, not a competition. Those 300+ point scores are highly tainted and the impact extends beyond the field in Phoenix.

The response by many FIRST participants to this occurrence was immediate and quite consistent: "We expected that it would take effective robots, good driving, good strategy and some luck to be winners; not some backroom, 'gentlemen's agreements' to pile up points." There were letters distributed by a couple of teams (68 and 624) expressing the inappropriate nature of these agreements between alliances. Most teams concurred with the letters and indicated that if approached, they would refuse to make such agreements.

In the interest of FIRST, teams should work with their alliance partners to developed winning strategies - it is never appropriate to hold such discussions with opponents before a match.