[ChuckDickerson]

When our team left the pits about 5:30 Thursday night only 8 robots out of 37 had passed inspection at the Bayou. I was very worried Thursday night that a lot of our Friday matches would be 1 on 1 or 1 on 2 matches. Upon entering the pits on Friday morning all but 12 of the robots had passed. I was somewhat relieved until I started noticing robots competing with obvious major rules violations. It seems that the inspectors at the Bayou decided to just let stuff go. Wedge robots, duct taped up wheels to reduce traction, illegal parts used from previous kits, robots that didn’t meet height requirements, etc., etc., etc. Later I started noticing even more tape appearing on manipulators. When we asked the inspectors they said they were REQUIRING it. It seems that many of the robots were puncturing so many of the tubes that the refs and inspectors got together and decided that the best solution was to make the teams tape up the sharp points/edges. Uh, so now instead of penalizing teams for a violation of one rule we force them to violate another? Shouldn’t the teams have been required to either remove the sharp points/edges or remove their manipulator? We were flat out told that they were letting it go because there were so many rookies (13 of the 37) and it was un-GP to ask about it. Excuse me? Didn’t we all get the same rules on the same day?