[Donut]

Wow, I think Arizona must actually have some kind of football following after hearing the responses in this thread.

There is typically a 30 minute show (Friday Night Fever) every Friday during football season here in Arizona from 11:30 to midnight. It shows highlights from many of the games, scores from everything they get scores for, and they invite a football team+cheerleaders+band to their studio every week. COX Cable (a local cable provider) airs one game every week on their local station. A radio station does highlights, and I found out that starting this year one of the stations will be covering a complete game every week.

Personally I think high school sports can be a great thing. I don't really see a problem with building a new stadium for example. Our stadium has been used by the football team, marching band, drum corps visiting the state, soccer team, track team, our graduation ceremonies, and YMCA football and soccer leagues, so it's by no means a wasted expenditure for an over-hyped sports program.

If we don't believe that high school football teams should be allowed on National TV or have tons of money spent on them, why on earth should a bunch of FIRST teams get the same thing?

In case you're wondering, football is huge at my school. Our football team has only missed the playoffs once in the past 25 years, and our team has made the State Championship 3 times in a row (finally winning last year).

If FIRST teams really want to receive all the school support they want, maybe some of the people on these teams need to start supporting the sports at their school in return. The most memorable comment I've ever recieved about our team was not a business owner telling us what a good community thing our team is, or a school administrator saying how wonderful a teaching program we are, but a varsity football player telling me how amazing he thought our robot was at a pep rally.