[DougHogg]

Team 980 was the first to sign your petition at the Arizona Regional and we are proud to sign it now.

We feel that the most basic agreement on which the competition is based is the kickoff where the game was described as a 2-on-2 competition, and that forming agreements with your opponents is a basic violation of that concept.

We further feel that making agreements with your opponents is harmful to the competition and to FIRST, because if it was continued, teams would soon agree to let all 4 robots get up on the ramp and then start sharing the bins. This would lead to a theatrical performance instead of a competition. Audiences would find this to be boring and fake. In our society, this is not acceptable in any sport or competition that we have ever heard of.

Also teams which have worked very hard to make robots that can stack are unfairly deprived of the fruits of their efforts, because teams making agreements with their opponents have huge stacks without making such a mechanism.

Additionally we observed that this practice caused bad feeling and upset at the regional we attended, and thus should be discarded as harmful to FIRST as a whole.

We have not, and will not, accept any offers by our opponents, and will not alliance with teams in the elimination rounds that do, even if it means that we will not be in the elimination rounds at a competition.