Well, here's the problem:
¤ Pop music applies to masses
¤ Remember all that talk about how FIRST members are one in a million, one in thirty, etc? FIRST members are not part of the masses
Now, this gives us a tough choice.
a. Playing music that apeals to the masses gives us more apeal to the masses - increasing the popularity of FIRST. This is good, BUT
b. Increasing the popularity of FIRST means becoming more pop ourselves, means loosing our uniqueness. Lets face it, how much gracious professionalism is in the outside world? Sure, bringing some of them to us is going to spread gracious professionalism to them, but you're forgetting that the pull is both ways - while we bring gracious professionalism to them, they bring what is 'pop' to us (not just talking about music here).
My opinion is that FIRST is unique. FIRST wants two goals: to maintain that uniqueness and spread it to every school in the nation (and to be politically correct, other nations as well
). However, these two goals contradict themselves. What is so unique about a high-school event that occurs in every high-school?
Basically, increasing the level of FIRST indefinately will result in an ultimate loss of quality, uniqeness, and yes, gracious professionalism. What they have to decide is
how big does FIRST really want to get? Sure, the size of the Roman Empire brought prosperity, riches, and who knows what else. But also keep in mind that the Roman Empire fell because it tried to become bigger than it should have.