What makes FRC a sport?

[sgreco]

I don't think FRC is a sport. A sport is an athletic activity, and FRC is certainly not that. There's been a lot debate about this in the past and people argue adamantly that FRC is sport as if it is some form of insult for FRC not to be classified as such. FRC is no better or worse being considered a sport as opposed to not being considered a sport, it's just different. People seem to think it's better to call it a sport; I think it doesn't make a difference, FRC is the same great program either way.

[JamesBrown]

Originally Posted by JamesCH95

I think that people are exerting energy during a match. Pushing a joystick or a button requires a force applied over a distance (energy) and therefore the driver is physically exerting energy. It may not be much, but it is greater than zero.

Seriously, I figured we had until january before we started lawyering things again.

[Laaba 80]

Originally Posted by JamesBrown

Robots are not athletes. An athlete by definition is a person, our robots are equipment for playing a game, they are no closer to being athletes than a race car, a bike, or a pair of running shoes.

An athlete is a person by definition, but this definition was created far before robots were capable of being "athletes". In breakaway, the robot must move, possess the ball, shoot the ball, pass the ball, etc all on its own power. The same things a human soccer "athlete" must do. Race cars and bikes are both for the sole purpose of transporting the person in the sport, they dont also need to interact with a ball, or whatever other game piece. I guess we can agree to disagree.

[JamesCH95]

Originally Posted by Chris is me

That defines any game as a sport. Is there no distinction? I thought sport was a subset of game.

Hehe... you're right.

On the subject: a local high school awards varsity letters to the debate team. By their definition thinking and talking is a sport.

Where is the line drawn? Or is this is really a "I know it when I see it" definition?

[JamesBrown]

Originally Posted by Laaba 80

An athlete is a person by definition, but this definition was created far before robots were capable of being "athletes". In breakaway, the robot must move, possess the ball, shoot the ball, pass the ball, etc all on its own power. The same things a human soccer "athlete" must do. Race cars and bikes are both for the sole purpose of transporting the person in the sport, they dont also need to interact with a ball, or whatever other game piece. I guess we can agree to disagree.

Put an FRC robot on a field by itself, no human driving it, what will it do? Robots are still not capable of being athletes, the most sophisticated robots in the world are capable of playing games with varying degrees of success, FRC robots are not even capable of that. Without a human driver there were no robots in breakaway that could be considered athletes, they are really just machines. We are decades away from anything close to a machine that can reason and function well enough to force us to examine our definition of an athlete.

[JamesBrown]

Originally Posted by JamesCH95

Hehe... you're right.

On the subject: a local high school awards varsity letters to the debate team. By their definition thinking and talking is a sport.

Where is the line drawn? Or is this is really a "I know it when I see it" definition?

There are also schools that award letters for Robotics.

There is nothing that says Varsity letters must be given to sports teams. Varsity recognition is commonly given to the top team as an acknowledgement that they are the ones who officially represent that school in competition. Most commonly this looks at sports but certainly the definition could be extended to any athletic or academic team.

Just because someone (or some group) thinks it is a sport doesn't mean it is a sport (Fallacy of Appeal to Authority as your varsity debaters would tell you). I would be willing to bet that whoever wrote the justification to give Varsity letters to those students didn't use the arguement "It is a sport because talking, gesturing and writing all expend energy, therefore there is physical exertion, therefore it is a sport".

[JamesCH95]

Originally Posted by JamesBrown

There are also schools that award letters for Robotics.

There is nothing that says Varsity letters must be given to sports teams. Varsity recognition is commonly given to the top team as an acknowledgement that they are the ones who officially represent that school in competition. Most commonly this looks at sports but certainly the definition could be extended to any athletic or academic team.

Just because someone (or some group) thinks it is a sport doesn't mean it is a sport (Fallacy of Appeal to Authority as your varsity debaters would tell you). I would be willing to bet that whoever wrote the justification to give Varsity letters to those students didn't use the arguement "It is a sport because talking, gesturing and writing all expend energy, therefore there is physical exertion, therefore it is a sport".

Now who's lawyering...

I'm kidding, don't worry.

I looked up the definition of a varsity letter, and it is awarded for excellence in school activities. My assumption that it was awarded to sports teams was incorrect.

I like your terms "athletic team" and "academic team." Do only athletic teams participate in sports or can academic teams participate in sports? Can there be some overlap? Maybe we need a Venn diagram...

I like mathking's example of precision shooting. I assume there is no significant stamina or endurance required, but it is considered an Olympic sport. FRC demands fine motor control and precise machine operation similar to shooting that other games do not (I'm looking at you Chris_is_me). Does the demand of good hand-eye coordination and fine motor skill qualify FRC as a sport? Does the fact that this machine exists in reality, rather than virtually (I'm thinking of video games here) make it a sport?

[Basel A]

Originally Posted by JamesBrown

This is baseless and completely inaccurate, as some one who played sports growing up, continues to play a sport at a high level and coaches and has coached youth through college programs I can assure you that sports have influenced many more kids than programs like FIRST have. Any one who thinks that the primary impact of sports on 99% of its participants has anything to do with on field results never has coached or been coached effectively.

I never had any doubt that this is true up to high school sports, but didn't believe in the positive outside effects of sports in college. However, I did some reading and it seems college-level student athletes have better academic experiences than I thought (outside of "revenue sports:" football and basketball).

While there's no doubt that collegiate athletics takes time away from academics and evidence that suggests it causes lower GPAs, most student-athletes believed that their athletic experience would aid them in post-college life and that's enough for me. The most relevant articles are cited below.

Kerr, G., & Miller, P. S. (2002). The athletic, academic and social experiences of intercollegiate student-athletes. Journal of Sport Behavior, 25.4, 346.

Potuto, J. R., & O'Hanlon, J. (2007). National Study of Student-athletes regarding their experiences as college students. College Student Journal, 41.4, 947.

Maloney, M. T., & McCormick, R. E. (1993). An Examination of the Role That Intercollegiate Athletic Participation Plays in Academic Achievement: Athletes' Feats in the Classroom. The Journal of Human Resources, 28.3, 555-570.

P.S. The distinction between revenue and non-revenue sports is important. Revenue sports are likely about just that: making money. Another study suggested athletic success brings more and better high-schooler applications to universities, and it's likely that this refers to the most publicised athletic successes: those of revenue sports. Non-revenue sports, however, are neither making lots of money nor bringing attention. They could have the primary goal of development of which you speak.

P.P.S. Did I do too much research?

[JaneYoung]

It can only be a sport if the brain power is a result of the mind's jungle gym of opportunistic uses when strengthening the goals of thinking outside the box and achieving those goals determined, short term and long term.

Yeah, run-on sentence. (That's going the distance... )

Jane

[mathking]

Originally Posted by JamesBrown

How many of these refer to what we are actually talking about? The english language is inherently complicated but I think we could knock out a bunch of those definitions pretty quickly.

I was actually only counting the definitions that pertained to what we are talking about. My point is not that robotics is a sport, or that it isn't. (I tend to come down on the "isn't" side, but don't think the distinction is that important.) My point is that it is very hard to come up with a definition of sport that includes and excludes everything one thinks should be included or excluded. I have actually used writing a definition of sport to include and exclude certain activities as an exercise in class when teaching about the difficulty you can run into when writing specifications.

To illustrate my point, take the number one Dictionary.com definition:
"an athletic activity requiring skill or physical prowess and often of a competitive nature, as racing, baseball, tennis, golf, bowling, wrestling, boxing, hunting, fishing, etc."
OK, if you extend "athletic activity" to include hunting and fishing, I think you can make a pretty good argument that operating a robot (and often being a human player) as is done in FRC competition fits the definition.

One of the natural tendencies at this point is to move more toward one of the OED definitions: "an activity involving physical exertion and skill in which an individual or team competes against another or others for entertainment" and to argue that say fishing doesn't require much real physical exertion. But a lot of people in this camp argue that something like NASCAR is not a sport, but race car driving involves a lot of physical exertion, more than a lot of activities which seem safely in the "sport" camp.

I loved the discussion in my class last year on this topic. It really engaged my students' critical thinking and argumentation skills.

I think my biggest argument against FRC being a sport is that only a handful of members of the team actually do any of the physical things to operate the robot (or fling the game elements) in competition. On the other hand, I still consider the football players who only practice and never get in a game to be athletes. And at least one person in this thread doesn't believe that one of the sports I coach and played in both HS and college (cross country) is a sport.

[Thundrio]

I have been hearing a lot about the definition of a sport lately, and it's an interesting topic.

For anybody interested in going deeper into this topic, there are some very interesting discussions happening about this topic but applied to Starcraft 2 (thread is at http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/view...pic_id=288621), and I guess e-sports in general. For anybody who doesn't know, the real times strategy game Starcraft 2 is a growing e-sport (electronic sport) that has many professional players and tournaments with $50,000+ prize pools.

Personally I think in the most literal sense of the term FRC is not a sport, rather it is a competition (along with Starcraft). But it's an incredibly complicated topic that would take a while to cover thoroughly (I wish I hadn't already done my Senior research paper ~-~)

[Sconrad]

Originally Posted by JamesBrown

Put an FRC robot on a field by itself, no human driving it, what will it do? Robots are still not capable of being athletes, the most sophisticated robots in the world are capable of playing games with varying degrees of success, FRC robots are not even capable of that. Without a human driver there were no robots in breakaway that could be considered athletes, they are really just machines. We are decades away from anything close to a machine that can reason and function well enough to force us to examine our definition of an athlete.

Umm, that sounds an awful lot like autonomous...

Yes, I realize that a 15 second autonomous is far from complete artificial intelligence. That aside, I tend to agree with you that the robots are not athletes. Also, I'm not sure I see the point of arguing too much over whether or not FIRST is a sport, even on a financial level. I am a member of my school's marching band, and while we are not considered a sport, a lot of money goes into the program. It isn't close to the budget of the football team, but honestly, comparing a club's budget to a football team is never a good idea. If you compare the budget of a swimming team, which seems to fit all of the definitions of sports that have been posted so far, to a football team, the swimming team is going to come up way short almost without exception.

FIRST markets itself as a sport because many concepts often associated with sports, lots of extracurricular hours, exciting spectator events, and the development of talents within the athlete/student, to list a couple, are part of FIRST. Currently, most people categorize extracurricular activities as clubs or sports. To call FIRST a club does it a gross injustice, as the vast majority of clubs fail to provide the excitement and motivation that FIRST provides. While FIRST is not necessarily the epitome of a sport, sport is definitely a better classification of FIRST than club. In reality, FIRST falls into an interesting niche that cannot really be classified definitively as a sport or as a club. IMHO, this has a lot to do with the fact that FIRST seeks to emulate and expose students to the professional world, using the excitement of a sporting event as a cover for this purpose.

As a side note, I think you guys are focusing way too much on student drivers. The position of student driver is rarely held by anywhere close to the majority of students on the team. I don't think I saw any posts mentioning either the scouting or the spectator aspect. While these are not part of most dictionary definitions, they are a key part of the connotation of what is a sport.

Anyway, that's my 2 cents

[LemmingBot]

I think its a sport in the same way horse racing is a sport.
. Several humans are committed in making one champion horse/robot
. Victory depends on how well the driver/jockey can play off their bot's/horse's strengths.
. Extremely long registration names

[gegozi]

Originally Posted by EricH

Oh, and I forgot: WAYYY back in the day, ESPN showed the FIRST Robotics Competition Nationals. Back in the 90's, or so I hear.

1996. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T8N6lnle1fc

I wish ESPN would do this in more recent years.

EDIT: We should petition ESPN to do this.

[MikLast]

Originally Posted by gegozi

1996. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T8N6lnle1fc

I wish ESPN would do this in more recent years.

EDIT: We should petition ESPN to do this.

There are much better channels with wider audiences now. lets think bigger.