*To start this off I believe I took my time to step back and form a very honest and true opinion of the format that FIRST follows and the general problems they seem to have. This post does not represent the views of team 151 but of a concerned participant in a competition with issues to resolve*
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First off, the idea of Battle Bots is ANTITHETICAL to the ideas behind FIRST. Going around a field beating other robots to bits is not Gracious Professionalism as can be defined by anything.
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Theres another issue that Dean Kamen and Woodie both preach. The issue with Gracious professionalism is that is largely a Utopian idea. In the real workforce a company is not going to apply tactics like gracious professionalism. They will do whatever they can to win the contract. The real world does not help there competitor. At the real world level the companies goals are money. The FIRST program has an entirely different goal and thats education. Gracious Professionalism works when the goal of a group is education not when the goal of a group is money. The idea of "gracious professionalism" is mis-phrased and sometimes misused. It should be more of a quote like "Good Sportsmanship" which is an attribute that any competition should support. The real world does not have Gracious Professionalism. But real world competitions do usually have good sportsmanship
Also I'm not saying that FIRST should ditch everything and become a Robot Combat Competition. I'm just saying they should be slightly more lenient on the rules. Doing so because of the path or "commercial robot applications" that Battle bots has created.
If you want to say that FIRST can be self sustaining or that it will grow with out media I have to disagree. It will reach a point where there will be few to no new teams joining. If they don't adapt the program they wont survive. The program as it is can and does only entertain a certain niche. If it does not adapt to be a little more "aggressive" First will be slowly downsized by more adaptive science programs. Programs that allow for a similar experience with a smaller rule set and larger robot capabilities. If the competition fails to "entertain" it will fail to be as large a program as it has the possibility for.