On team 108, in my senior year, I had moved to change the team name, but encountered a LOT of problems with that from the engineers. I had felt that constantly labelling SigmaC@T with a mere double digit at the end every year was getting annoying, it reminded me of a bad sequel or something. They were upset that it took them quite some time to develop that name, as previous years we had been mixed nuts and technocrates (which is pronounced like socrates, not Techno Crates) and the sigma was something quite meaningful to motorola and the cat being dillard's mascot.
Not to mention that changing your team name every year kind of makes you loose your identity. Teams forget about you. Teams that keep thier name are remembered: Chief Delphi, Wildstang, X-Cats, etc, everyone remembers and knows of them. So I reasoned that changing the team name may not be required, but it is possible to have a different team and robot name. And If im not mistaken, both are announced at competitions.
This idea was shot down as well, but I look at it this way. When a company, say CarCo creates a new product, they dont call it CarCo2001, they give the product a new name, Sportron. While the company name stays the same, the product name changes. Robots being the product of teams, thier names should change as well. Not only is it refreshing, but allowing the current team to bestow a name upon the new robot that they helped to build, would make everyone feel as one. It may sound silly (oh yes, silly indeed very silly. So silly it may need a spanking. Yes! A spanking! A Spanking! No, no stop this, stop this at once and get on with it. Get ON WITH IT!)... err, as I was saying, but hey, it's almost like those team building activities. Something that everyone agrees upon and can identify with, while keeping the team identity.
Bah, hope my frazzled mind helps.
-Robby O --->
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