[Mark Hamilton]

While there will always be some form of disparity between the big money teams and the smaller underfunded teams, it doesnt neccesarily mean the smaller team cannot win. Being a large team with a large multinational corporation behind you comes with its own problems. For example, I will use our team. We build our robot at Motorola. This means we get access to their excellent facilities, but it also means we need to make ID badges for all students, be escorted at all times by a Motorola employee, are only able to access the robot when engineers are able to get away from their very demanding jobs, etc. the bureacracy involved with accomplishing simple tasks in a large corporation can be amazing. Do not think teams with large corporate sponsors are handed their robots on a silver plater. FIRST is not about building the biggest most expensive robot money can buy, thats what battlebots is for. Both teams rich and poor should still have the same goal of learning, team spirit, and inspiration. Once again I will use my own team as an example. We could probably hand the engineers at Motorola the rules to the competition and a budget, come back in 6 weeks and pick up our robot. The talented engineers at Motorola would no doubt build an en exellent robot capable of doing quite well. We may even win the competition, but as a FIRST team, we have accomplished nothing. Instead the engineers work side by side with us, involving us every step of the way. This method definetly is a lot more work for the engineers, and it may not come out quite as polished and efficient if they had built it by themselves. This is not to say the students cant make excellent contributions, but in all reality when you have amatuers build something it takes longer and more work. Our robot might not score as well but we accomplished our goal and wouldnt see it any other way. This has turned into a rather long rant, but im trying to make a point. FIRST isnt about who has more money, theres plenty of places for that kinda competition to take place, because just winning the competition is not the goal.