[BSMFIRST]

Your fury is somewhat misdirected. I received that email from Nola Garcia who is working with Battlebots to run the new competition.
This has been a long running and heated debate (notice the almost religious fervor that eruprts?) and I won't feed the fire anymore--at least not now. But I will say that:

-Nola, the key person organizing this, has also done some HUGE work for FIRST in terms of organizing teams creating postseason competitions, etc. She is the nicest, most caring person on the face of this Earth (as you rightly predict.)

-Her "bosses", Greg Munson and Trey Roske of Battlebots, are pretty far from "Don King" and "Vince McMahon." You have to be familiar with them and BattleBots to understand this (and I know you are not.)

-The end result of this competition, besides some beaten robots and insanely-enthused childeren, will be tremendously POSITIVE and so much the same as Dean's ultimate goal.

I posted the email because it (very obviously) would interest FIRST competitors. If they enter BB instead of FIRST they would do so because it would benefit their needs better. And if Battlebots is in fact so malicious and money-oriented then you'll be glad to get rid of them, RIGHT? Well you're actually wrong there because the former-FIRST competitors I have met in Battlebots have been absolutely exceptional people (a Woodie Flowers award winner is in that bunch.) They all love FIRST and Dean, but certain parts (like the time crunch, the cost, and the incredible difficulty of teaching AND building a bot at the same time) were too much.
Dan