Hits, Misses, & Suggestions -- long message

[archiver]

Posted by James Jones.

Engineer on team #267, The Demolition Squad, from North Broward & St Andrews and Motorola.

Posted on 8/18/2000 10:32 AM MST


In Reply to: Hits, Misses, & Suggestions -- long message posted by Joe Johnson on 8/16/2000 9:49 AM MST:



The games will never be popular to watch on TV until we have good, knowledgable, proffessional sounding announcers. I heard some that did a good job some that did not-so-good. None of them that I heard knew the robots or the teams or the games well enough to give an uninitiated viewer a feel for the game and some of the important background info that makes the games fun to watch. What if FIRST found a few anouncers that would go to every regional, watch the games, learn the robots, talk to the teams and get human interest stories that could be used to fill in between rounds? Then they could say things like:

'Sally who have we got coming up on this next round here on the Einstein stage'

'Well Bob, we're going to see quite a battle here between the alliance of teams 888 and 999 versus two teams who happen both to be from Florida, teams 777 and 555.'

'This IS going to be quite a competition, Sally. 777 and 888 are two of the fastest robots at this competition and 555 is currently 2nd in the rankings aren't they?'

'Yes they are Bob, but last round they broke a chain in their drive system, we'll have to see if they got that fixed. And as you said, speed is going to be the name the of this game. But don't forget team 999. They have been doing an excellent job all week of preventing their opponents from scoring. They can't pick up balls but they can sure block and I don't think 555 wants to get in a shoving match with them or they might break another chain.'

'You know Sally I was talking to the coach on team 555 and they had designed a ball scooper but it was too heavy and put their robot over the weight limit so they had to take it off.'

'That's too bad Bob, not being able to pick up balls has really hurt them in the rankings but I think once teams realize how well they can guard that goal they might get picked for the finals pretty quickly.'

'Let's hope so, Sally. That team has had some tough breaks this year. Did you know their driver broke his arm rollerblading last week? They reprogrammed their entire control system so he could drive with only his good arm! Now that's dedication!'


Anyway, you get the drift. Am I just dreaming?