[Scott Ritchie]

I think we need to step back and relax. Yea someone got the better of us especially us veteran teams. I have to say we got snookered in to one of these deals and paid the price. I was furious with my drive crew and totally lit my pit up when I came out of the stands and that was when one of my students told me that they had been asked to strike a deal in the match. Even our engineer that was in the driving station was unaware of the what was going on and was telling our driver to get the stack out of there. I am sure the students thought if this worked that it would be for the best but they came out on the short side and it was't pretty.

After calming down I am not near as sore and I think we have to play the game to expect this stuff. I even went as far to think what a real life lesson this has been. I mean come on this is something that happens everyday in the real world and don';t we always tell our grant people and sponsors how we are participating in this real world event and preparing engineers for the future. What happened, we got backed doored or we got a trick play used on us by a 2nd year team, lets get past it. I can say that our team knows that we will not be participating in these deals and a few students learned the hard way in the end I am glad it happened and we are making plans to deal with it in the future.

I would also say it is time to quit dragging 698 through the mud. Nice team and nice people. I have to say when we were told they were going to draft us with the first pick we were going to turn it down due to all of this but we decided as a team that we would accept the honor and play with them, forget the differences and play the game the way it should be.