[JesseK]

The good news is, I believe FIRST realises that there are several school systems that will take longer than they hoped to bring in Sci/Tech programs to their schools -- hence FTC. The bad news is, at least here in Northern Viriginia FTC has exploded and there aren't enough spots in the FIRST FTC competitions for all of the teams.

I played football in Middle Georgia for 3 years in high school. Each year our budget (including paying the coaches a bit extra, keeping the grass green on the field, 1-wk football camp, equipment, travel, steak dinners at long away games, etc) was in excess of $100k. How did we manage it? About half of that money came from the school board; the other half from booster clubs. In other words, the community that's interested in a program pays for the program. How are FRC teams any different?

In real life, I use almost nothing I learned from football except that with a bit of hard work you can get somewhere. Oh, and I have bad knees on top of that. I could have (and wished I would have) learned that from a FIRST FRC team instead. At least then I would have gone to college with a purpose other than "I'm supposed to go to college to get a good job".