[ARampantBrian]

I think there are many things that VEX and FRC get right individually. I did both in high school and continue to mentor in FRC currently.

VRC is much better for many schools/organizations. As has been mentioned before, VRC is much cheaper for teams, and definitely doesn't have the same scare factor that FRC does in both time and money. From experience, VRC competitions are also much easier to manage and run than FRC competitions are. It is much easier for schools, students, and mentors to jump in and do well in VRC because VEX's building equipment is a lot more simple to put together for someone without experience than FRC is.

However, VRC just doesn't have the same wow factor in my opinion. Something that makes FRC the spectacle it is is the arena factor of the competition. FRC has much more of the sport feeling to it than VRC does, which feels much more like a hobbyist competition to me than FRC does. I think the six-week challenge for FRC teams makes it much more of an interesting challenge than VRC is, and in FRC you get much more difference in design than VRC due to the time teams have to work on the robot.

I know, personally, I would not want to continue in VRC because as a mentor, I just do not enjoy the competitions and challenge as much as I do the FRC challenge. Something about the six week build time and the size of the competitions just makes the time needed to compete well more worth it than what I experienced as a student in VRC.

Overall, I think the problem with FRC is that it is not easy to jump into as VRC is. Although I personally prefer FRC, I would suggest VRC as a robotics competition for a new school/team. I think if FRC wants to continue to grow and wants to continue to be more available, both funds and the learning curve to FRC needs to be addressed if it still wants to be the main high school robotics competition.