"We Are the Champions" and GP?

[Karthik]

Originally Posted by aaeamdar

Karthik,

You seem to have missed the fact that other significant parts of North American sports (and, well, almost everywhere else) include: the idea that winning is everything and acting in an unsportsmanlike manner towards your opponents and getting away with it/applauded for it. I would like to think, cheesy as it may sound, that we're all winners at first, and if we all recognized this song as applying to all the teams who built a robot, then really my entire argument collapses. But we all know that that's not the meaning of the song.

I'm glad that you feel recognized when this song plays. However, it's frankly unreasonable for the recognition of winning teams to be more important then (broken record sound) our most important ideals. If recognition has to take a back seat to respecting the entire idea of FIRST, then that's the way it needs to be.

You seemed to miss the fact that it's still a competition. If you take the competition out of FIRST, you are left with very little, and we've suddenly lost the source of inspiration, and the medium to achieving the goals of FIRST.

Perhaps we should stop giving out trophies and medals to the winning teams as well. Everyone should be satisfied with their bronze participation medals. After all, we're all winners.

If we come to a point where the celebration of the winners demeans the losing teams, then yes, we need to cut back. But in FIRST, we're not even close to being at that point. Frankly, I don't think we do enough to celebrate the teams that perform the best on the field. In my opinion this is one of the bigger problems in FIRST. It's almost as if people are ashamed to be competitive in this program. That we're so focussed on keeping everyone happy, that we've lost site of the competition.

Yes, there's much more to FIRST than winning. That doesn't mean that there's anything wrong with celebrating the winners.

[aaeamdar]

Originally Posted by Karthik

You seemed to miss the fact that it's still a competition. If you take the competition out of FIRST, you are left with very little, and we've suddenly lost the source of inspiration, and the medium to achieving the goals of FIRST.

Perhaps we should stop giving out trophies and medals to the winning teams as well. Everyone should be satisfied with their bronze participation medals. After all, we're all winners.

If we come to a point where the celebration of the winners demeans the losing teams, then yes, we need to cut back.

You've missed my essential point here: it's not that the celebration of the winners demeans the losing teams; it's that the celebration of the winners in this way demeans FIRST itself. Another poster (Josh Murphy) mentioned that he saw a contradiction between the lyrics and GP. While he didn't think this warranted a song change (if I may speak for you, Josh), he still considered these things to be in contradiction.

I'm thinking at the moment that if you don't see the contradiction, then, no disrespect to you, but between us (and this goes for everyone), we don't have common grounds for further discussion. It's not my aim to convince you that the song is in conflict with the idea of GP. To me it seems obvious; to others, not so much.

[Bharat Nain]

While I did not read all the posts thoroughly, I think I really need to mention this. When the song says, "you are the losers" or mentions anything about "losers", what they are really saying is "the team that won deserves it because they have worked hard as anything and smarter than anything and winning is the most important thing to them and that is why they won". I have been fortunate to be on a team where we value winning and I am also fortunate to be associated with people in other organizations who value winning. This is why I understand that to be a winner in the real rough world out there, you need to have many things in your life in place. Or in the case of FIRST, you need to have many things in your team in place to win consistently. So that is why, if my team is a finalist, we're still a winner. We fought our way hard up there and we deserve it very well. If this song had a negative meaning towards the finalist or second place, then I do not think the world of sports would embrace it so much.

[aaeamdar]

Originally Posted by Bharat Nain

If this song had a negative meaning towards the finalist or second place, then I do not think the world of sports would embrace it so much.

That sounds nice, but you've honestly got to be kidding me. If you think the world of sports gives a darn about #2 compared to #1, get me some of what you're smoking.

Originally Posted by Bharat Nain

When the song says, "you are the losers" or mentions anything about "losers", what they are really saying is "the team that won deserves it because they have worked hard as anything and smarter than anything and winning is the most important thing to them and that is why they won".

How does talking about the team that didn't win refer to the team that did win? I don't even know what to say here.

[Mike]

Originally Posted by aaeamdar

get me some of what you're smoking.

I don't think that phrase ideally represents FIRST.