Victor 888 vs Jaguar for rookie drive train

[yash101]

As Brennon pointed out, you may like the victors. They are a great choice. However, if you get good funding (because you are a rookie team), you may want to give talons a try. It works exactly the same as victors (even the wiring) but is sealed, so you won't have to worry as much as debris getting inside the holes, damaging the controller

I think that victors are the best for rookies because PWM is a very easy-to-use motor communications protocol. You probably will have access to only one cRIO, so the team will be cramped trying to use it for educational purposes. With PWM, you could easily use an Arduino or Propeller, etc. That way, you could prototype an application by yourself while another person can be using the cRIO or another controller.

I really like how easy it is to use PWM. However, this would be one-sided because I haven't played much with CAN!

However, if I am not wrong (and please correct me if I am), you can have more motor controllers on the CAN but than you can have PWM connections. That will allow you to have more complex mechanisms! There is the problem that it is hard to get enough Digital I/O pins.
"Pins, pins and pins...what microcontrollers need more of"

Check out this thread