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EVEN More thoughts..
Posted by Ryan McElroy at 04/15/2001 12:05 AM EST
Student on team #492, Titans, from International School and KPCB.
In Reply to: More thoughts..
Posted by Kevin Sevcik on 04/11/2001 10:49 AM EST:
I think you are wrong concerning the cheering at other's failures subject: When the failure is due directly to another robot, then what has really happened is that one team did well while another did not as well. Therefore, cheering is justified. But when failure is due only to an error, it is very lackluster, and cheering can only be taken in a hurtful way.
On another note, it is very possible to have head to head competition without violence. RoboCup (Robot soccer), for example: Robots are not allowed to run into each other, or it is a penalty.
However, I'm not sure about FIRST's thinking on the future of the competition. On one hand, they want to grow it into a nationally recognized sporting event, as Dean said at nationals, and as is evident in getting National Beverage to put the FIRST logo on one of its products. On the other hand, they seem unwilling to do what makes the really successful sports really successful: and that is violence. Its not all-out violence, but what makes sports successful is controlled violence.
Take baseball, for example. Its not violent, right? Wrong. Pitchers throw a hard ball at almost 100mph very close to the batter, who swings a big peice of wood to try to accelerate the ball in the oppisite direction to 200mph+. Its very violent, but its a controlled violence. No one likes to see a batter hit, for example. Football is the same way: No one wants an injured player, but everyone loves how physical the game is.
I think that if FIRST is to be successful as a *sport*, it needs an element of head to head competition. Probably, it'll need to turn into more of a sport as well, with more frequent meetings between fewer teams. I think that this is a long way off, if it ever heappens, but its something to think about.
~Ryan
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