ChampionSplit: A Historical Perspective

[Joe Johnson]

First my historical Bonafides. I was baking in the Florida sun, doing the Macarena when it was "the new thing" in the spring of 1996 at the last Nationals (as it was called then) that was hosted actually inside the the gates of EPCOT (on the World Showcase Theater if you must know). I saw Dr. Murphy hand the first Woodie Flowers award trophy to Woodie at the closing ceremonies of that tournament. I was a co-founder of Team 47 and I actually coded (in Perl) some of the early versions of these very fori (still to be seen on the WaybackMachine.org).

I've been doing FIRST a long time and I believe that FIRST has lost its way (or at least is in the process of losing it).

I used to cheer inside when I heard Dean & Co. describe FIRST as "The Olympics of Smarts." (news flash, there are no Coop Points awarded during the Olympics, I'm just sayin'). Yes, Dean talked about FIRST being about much more than competing robots BUT it was ABOUT COMPETING ROBOTS! The Ends was changing the culture but it was understood that the Means was a robot competition.

For good or ill, The Culture we live in is a TV Culture. Back then, FIRST talked often about getting on TV, and not just tangentially, it was front and center. Getting on TV was the "Make it loud" campaign of the day. FIRST paid to produce an ESPN show every year back then, hoping that the following year's FIRST show would be funded by a real TV producer motivated by profit rather than altruism. Beyond the ESPN show, there were continual rumors and hints that this or that TV Superstar was talking about doing this or that movie. It was almost a done deal, they just had a few details to work out, but an announcement about some PrimeTime TV slot with FIRST playing a major role would be coming soon.

Getting on TV was so central that around this time, Dean often discussed the possibility of establishing a FIRST Professional Level. This didn't seem as crazy as you might think. Back then, Robowars, Battlebots, Junkyard Wars and others had TV slots. Why not FIRST Pro?

I believed Dean and the rest of the folks at FIRST when they said that Changing the Culture on the scale that FIRST had it mind required getting on TV.

Over the years, FIRST has backed away from this goal. The formation of Multiple World Championships seems to me to be just the latest in a series of steps FIRST has taken to deny their very heritage. While they seem to have reversed themselves of late, for a time, Dean could often be heard saying that FIRST wasn't even about robots.

This is a huge mistake. Robots Competing is the Goose that Lays the Golden Eggs. Kill competition and you kill FIRST. There are a LOT of things that FIRST has done that are amazing. Almost none of them would have been possible without Robots Competing. Period. End of Story.

Is FIRST still awesome? Yes. After work and sleep, I spend more time volunteering for FIRST than any other activity in my life. I would do that if I didn't think FIRST was still worth doing?

THAT SAID, I can see a day when I stop doing FIRST if they do not right this ship.

I hope Manchester is listening (as Frank often says it is doing) and that they reverse this trend.

Dr. Joe J.

P.S. If FIRST wanted to turn a loss into a win, then they would basically take a page from the District Model's Playbook. Yes, crown a "World Champion" at as many 400 Team "World Championships" as you need to get every team in the world a theoretical chance to make it to "the Worlds" one year in 4. But, define a ranking system that determines a select group from each such tournament to meet at much a smaller venue (~60 teams) to crown the "Solar Champions." If we can't get TV interested in that tournament, then there is no hope for getting FIRST on TV.