[Jessica Boucher]

Now, I haven't taken psychology (yet, at least).....but my gut is telling me that this good robot competition/bad robot competition stuff is coming from fear. Fear of being undercut, fear of losing national corporate sponsorship, fear of never getting serious media coverage, fear of always hearing someone say "Oh, you mean <<insert robot TV show here>>?" when youre talking about FIRST...all stuff that has been ingrained into our heads since we joined into FIRST.

Im not saying that this is a bad thing, but we were always asked to help FIRST grow...our Chairmans award is based upon that simple idea. And theres nothing wrong with that either.

Seriously, I think part of the issue is that both competitions are going after the same target audience. Before, Battlebots was more of an adult thing, but with adding IQ into it, it is seen as threatening because it is infringing on an audience who FIRST once had spoken for on a national level.

And that's scary. I'd be scared too if come 10 years from now noone I knew could recognize what I spent the majority of my high school career doing.

But.....nothing to fear but fear itself, my dears. All we can do now is wait and see....as we all try to do the best we can.

Off topic PS - Nola, if you have any say in the matter, please educate the current female announcer! The woman from the first season was good.