[EricH]

For all who think that we are belittling athletes--
There is one thing about sports that they all have in common. Training. Athletes train continuously. They work hard for days on end, trying to be the best. I think most of us have played comptitive sports at one time or another. So we know something of what they go through. Now, we can respect them for that hard work, right? But then you hear of all these drug use allegations, and it's like, Why are they doing this when they could just train harder?

OK, now that I've started on this topic, here's something else to consider. FIRSTers train and practice and prepare very hard. Driver training, building the robot, making sure the rookies know what they are doing, recruiting team members, giving blood, sweat, and tears, you get the picture. Watching the robot weight could correlate to a jockey in horse racing having to be light so his horse doen't have to carry extra weight.

All I'm saying is that FIRST has almost everything it takes to be a sport. The one thing that might be lacking is human physical activity on the field, but that's where human players come in.