We had a generally lax approach about 2 of the spots on our drive team. Thomas Fortuna and I were always the mentor and primary driver, respectively, this year. Since we only had two buttons on our secondary controller (heh... one disabled the other, the other was a rocker switch for our goal grabber...), the secondary driver only had to be able to listen and follow directions. The human player rotated between 3 tall guys that never really impacted our games much more than one or two points.
Unfortunately, our secondary drivers sometimes didn't want to follow instructions, and instead had different ideas as to how the game should be played. That didn't work out too well, but we eventually 'persuaded' them to our arguments...
Thomas was a sophomore last year, as was I. He had a great mind for strategy and knew the game in and out, and was able to work extremely fluidly with any other coaches. We'd always be at someone's pit 15 minutes before queing(sp), or more depending on the strength of our opponents.
Our mentors have never really expressed an interest in the spotlight or playing the game. One of our mechanical mentors, Reggie, said "I just build the thing. You can drive it any way you want. Just realize that I built that robot tough for a reason, and don't go pansying it around". I get the feeling that if we let him in the driver's area we'd be deaf by the end of the match by all the competitive screams of his.
I think that the key to the whole driver issue is to really run through who is actually qualified in the week before shipping. If there are two really good drivers and a really good coach, rotate the drivers and keep the coach. If there is just one really good driver, let him or her drive, but train someone else. Make sure to train a second driver that can fill in if the first person is sick or mysteriously absent (CODEX meeting, maybe?
