[santosh]

The more and more I think about it, the more and more I consider FIRST a sport. This is simply by comparing it to racing (if you consider it a sport, I do). They spend time building and working on cars. they have a driver and a pit crew.
I know the driver must be pretty strong and have a lot of stamina to drive. A FIRST driver needs to last roughly 2 minutes. This is not what I consider a Le Mans 24 hour race.
Howver close it may be to NASCAR or F1 racing, I still don't fully think of it as a sport. I know this may seem like an overly stated statement. But FIRST is much more than a sport and the robot. You have to raise funds, you have a business like setup with leaders for most sub groups, you have mentoring, and outreach.
However it is still much less than a sport in that there is nowhere near the amount of physical exertion involvd. Come on, you cut, drill, mill, code, solder, make crimps, and other things like that. I don't consider that up to the physical exertion needed to smash a homerun out of the park or tackle a 230 lb. Bus, or slam dunk over someone.
So I guess this post was pretty confusing and contradicts itself a bit, but all in all, I don't fully consider FIRST Robotics a sport.