[FRC Blog] - Rookie Registration and On-Field Coaches

[Lil' Lavery]

Originally Posted by Akash Rastogi

I'm not a fan of the comparison to other sports. Leave the decision to the teams, I do not care what other teams are doing or who they choose as coach. If it works for you and you feel it is the best decision for you, great, but don't ever put a rule into place that tells others what to do.

People pick and choose what they want when it comes to comparing this to other sports, but then if I say that coaches in other sports yell and shout much of the time and talk down to their players, suddenly people don't want to be like other sports. Pretty hypocritical if you ask me. You can't compare yourself to another big league sport only when it is convenient for you. This is simply NOT like other sports. If it was, I probably wouldn't be in it.

It's not an all or nothing comparison. There's nothing "hypocritical" about saying that you want aspect X from the sporting world but not aspect Y. To be a hypocrite is to act in a manner that differs from the values you claim to have ("do as I say, not as I do"). How in any way is saying FIRST should emulate the positive aspects of sports but not the negative hypocritical?

FIRST itself readily uses the comparison to sports. It models its competition and program on the sports model, and its what separates FRC from science fairs and other STEM programs. It's the immediate analogy that is drawn by any common spectactor, parent or otherwise. It's a universal model that needs little explanation, save for where FRC intentionally differs. There's no surprise that coaches who aren't "on the sideline" is a matter of curiosity and contention among parents.

[Siri]

Originally Posted by Lil' Lavery

It's not an all or nothing comparison. There's nothing "hypocritical" about saying that you want aspect X from the sporting world but not aspect Y. To be a hypocrite is to act in a manner that differs from the values you claim to have ("do as I say, not as I do"). How in any way is saying FIRST should emulate the positive aspects of sports but not the negative hypocritical?

Absolutely. But you have to use something else to define what and why you want one element and not the other. Justifying such a distinction based on a shared quality: e.g. FIRST shouldn't have adults on the field because other sports don't (while simultaneously disavowing another aspect of those self-same sports) can be considered hypocritical because you're claiming to want something via a value that you do not apply universally. FIRST can and should pick and choose, so long as the distinction between "positive" and "negative" is justified somehow. For instance, abstaining from verbal abuse certainly has very, very obvious justifications, while the coach "sideline" debate is quite ambiguous.

For myself, I believe Frank's justification is very strong, between the survey and the blog post.


Al, thanks. I'd heard tell of this, but I didn't know the crossover year. 2009, wow--yeah, those results say more than I ever could!

[z_beeblebrox]

Where can I find the results of this survey which is being discussed?

[Siri]

Originally Posted by z_beeblebrox

Where can I find the results of this survey which is being discussed?

Here you go. The link's in Frank's blog post, but the URL didn't survive the trek to CD's quote.