[Koko Ed]

Many people who question the vadality of the Chairman's award, probably have never had anything to do with the award and probably mostly dealt with the construction of the robot mostly. So obviously they see the reward as absolutely an overrated aspect to the game or even perhaps as unecessary btu it is a real part of FIRST even if they have done a poor job of incorporating it into the fabric of the competitions til the reward ceremonies (how exciting is reading a four page essay in the middle of a competition?).
The best example of the Chairman's award in practice is what the Technocats did last season in CHicago gave team 909 one of their extra robots, which had a robot with a non-working drive base and they as a team decided to assist this other team. Not only did they give them the robot but thier choice actually cost them a match as they lost to their own robot. Such self-sacrafice is the true spirit of FIRST.
Now not every team will do it and not every team is expected to do it and there are some teams in FIRST who may look upon this action from confusion to contempt to disgust and wonder why help others when they are down. It is competition after all and the point is to win. But to simply look at FIRST in the aspect of wins and losses is just to make FIRSt a sport. Nothing more and nothing less. If that's all Dean aims for then why bother having the kids involved. Just put the task to the engineers and let 'em rip.
Every team that has won the Chairman's award is a model FIRST team that is a great influence on the landscape of the FIRSt community regaurdless of whether or not they build good robots year in and year out should be respected for who they are not questioned for why they are at the championship, taking up a free spot from a" more deserving" team that's good at building robots.