[archiver]

Posted by Kevin Sevcik at 04/20/2001 9:43 AM EST


College Student on team #57, Leopards, from BT Washington and the High School for Engineering Professions and Exxon, Kellog Brown & Root, Powell Electrical.


In Reply to: Re: What's so great about defense?
Posted by Jason Iannuzzi on 04/20/2001 8:59 AM EST:



This is the attitude that I'm really arguing against. Let me try to address the two points that you've just brought up.
Obviously football wouldn't be an interesting game without defense. This is probably because just about every single rule would have to be changed to make the game without defense. I'm sorry, but you can't argue against my point by making up a non-defensive version of a game that already has defense. Also, the only reason your imaginary sport isn't fun to watch is because the people are walking. Try running. There's a little event called the Olympics that seems to have made it very popular. There are, in fact, lots of sports that are exciting and don't involve defense or direct competition. Track & field, golf, bowling, drag racing, Monster truck racing, slam dunk contests, home run derbies, etc.

Second, I quite realize that everybody doesn't win in the real world. That's probably why there's only one national champion team (or alliance) every year. As long as there's a champion, I don't don't see how this is pertinent. What I was arguing against was a game that causes bad feelings between teams. I think that kind of game really runs counter to the spirit of FIRST. While I agree with Erin in her earlier reply that FIRSTers should be above this kind of thing, I don't think everyone is, and I don't think you can fairly expect everyone to be. While most veteran teams would shrug the loss off or congratulate the other team, the would also know from previous experience that they need to build a robot that can fight off defensive robots. Most rookie teams don't have the benefit of this knowledge, and they haven't been in FIRST long enough to shrug off the competition and robot as unimportant. So A rookie team that gets beaten like this probably WILL hold a grudge and will be a little soured towards the competition. And as they say, you never get a second chance to make a first impression.

Also, as a note, I'm not really expecting to change peoples minds about any of this. I know I'm not that eloquent of a speaker. I just feel like expressing my opinion about this.