The cheesecake runaway

[Lil' Lavery]

Originally Posted by lcoreyl

No. It goes back to the rule that lead to the thread where the cheesecake term came from, which was then reversed because FIRST was made aware of how it disallowed so many things that are good for FIRST.

At this point I've read this and the 900 champs thread, and all I've seen is this:

Team Cheesecake: "as a recipient of cheesecake I can tell you this was extremely inspirational for our team. Our kids loved being a part of this alliance"

Team lactose/gluten/fat free cake: "This made me feel icky regardless of the fact the team it happened to didn't feel icky. This wasn't the intent of FIRST. Also the other teams that could do things and didn't get drafted felt icky. This should be outlawed!"

Unless someone has a better argument than how seeing this makes you "feel", I think the evidence is pretty overwhelming that only good came of this.

First off, the positives your listing are also teams talking about how they feel.

Secondly, the unfortunate reality is that when the source of inspiration comes from working closely with an elite team and/or deep runs in the eliminations, unfortunately that's a zero sum equation. For each team that was picked to cheesecake, a team was left off an elimination alliance. In many cases that team was a very capable team that had a competitive season, but was left off in favor of a bot that presented a better blank slate to add parts to. In other words, they were left off for a less capable team. It's pretty easy to see how being passed over for a less capable team could be disappointing. Disappointment can very well lead to a lack of inspiration.

Does the the benefit of the cheesecaking team outweigh the disappointment of the teams passed over in alliance selection? It's certainly not an easy call to make, but it's not one that should be written off as some trivial matter that can be summed up by air quotes and sarcastic titles.