[Ali Ahmed]

I completely understand why FIRST wanted to make bumpers permanent in this game because they are needed. But really only for this game. I graduated from high school and then came to India in 2005 so I wasn't really able to see matches up close with bumpers but I think that bumpers kinda make FIRST games look slightly more nerdy and not so captivating, to an outside observer. Most people will look at Battlebots and will continue to watch it because you will see some metal on metal action and this is now not as prominent in FIRST, although I'm not saying that it should be. But if a complete stranger to FIRST glances at a match and sees some hardcore defense going on and gets into it then he will learn to true beauty of a FIRST game.

Also I believe that teams understand that bashing into other robots isn't really going to get anything done and the real way to win a match is to play the game and score points.

So what I'm saying is that the bumpers should not be mandatory.