2013 Lessons Learned: The Negative

[Oblarg]

Originally Posted by MARS_James

You do realize 341 is a Hall of Fame team right? They get what FIRST is about and I personally saw nothing wrong with his post, since as a team who got in off of wait list I would much rather have not gone and allowed for less teams thus more matches for those who did go.

If being from a HoF team immediately makes your posts Word of God, then I guess I'm uninformed.

Bear in mind that his point was not to reduce the number of teams for the sake of event logistics or increased number of matches, it was purely because he felt that teams were being "cheated" out of their "rightful seed" because they had the terrible experience of being paired with a team that isn't "elite!" Oh, the horror!

This clique-y nonsense has no place in a competition whose ostensible goal is to spread interest in STEM, and I don't particularly care who it's coming from. Neither should you. If you find the idea of a FIRST in which a small number of "elite" teams get to compete in nationals more appealing than a large number of not-so-"elite" teams, simply because you value the competition more than the engineering, then I contend that you do not understand the point of FIRST, no matter how prestigious your background. Get off your high horse and realize that FIRST is not about winning the tournament, nor has it ever been, nor should it ever be.