[Lil' Lavery]

I realize that perhaps I spent too much effort stressing the "doomsday scenario", and not enough time talking about the more immediate (although still avoidable) impacts. This overuse of hyperbole ended up weakening my point to some degree, although helping to expose the root problem. While it's true that in both sports and FIRST, a majority of teams and participants are good natured, the rotten seeds can often spoil it for everyone. Bad press is very hard to overcome.
While a focus on winning isn't automatically bad, and a certain degree of it is healthy, the added attention of TBA, Gameday, LF, Fantasy FIRST, and general CD threads is shifting the focus further an dfurther towards it. It's not hard at all to find tons of posts about the value of winning, each with merit behind their arguments. But when does this focus go too far? I don't think anyone has violated that line yet, but as we keep adding attention to it, it enlarges the risk.
The immediate results won't be the drastic ones suggested earlier, but will enter a much more murky grey area. When is it okay to have "try-outs" to get on the team? More importantly, what criteria is considered when evaluating applications? Are students judged on benefits for the student or benefits for the team?
While a vast vast majority of FIRST is in the right end of the spectrum, I have experienced teams who are not. Teams who genuinely dislike one another, teams that bend the rules, teams that attempt to suppress their competition more than on the playing field. When a team attends a regional specifically to best another team, is it a "challenge" worthy of accolade, or an unhealthy rivalry? When a semi-competitive teams enters a weaker regional in hopes to earn a spot at the Championship, is it good planning and strategy, inspiration for the other teams, or unfair to those with less resources?
While I recognize that many of these issues are not because of the community focus on winning, how does this focus alter these scenarios?
I'm unsure of the answers myself, thus why I posted them here. I think th community needs a healthy discussion and careful consideration of it's focus.