Competition and Jealousy

[JamesCH95]

In my mind there are two types of teams playing first:

1) The power-house win-win-win teams that have great resources at their disposal and very effective management.

2) The teams that just like making robots and competing for the sake of making a robot and competing with it, and maybe having an upset win here or there to make things interesting.

To be honest the most fun and enjoyable teams that I've ever been on (Robotics, Soccer, Volleyball, Ski Racing, Formula SAE, etc) always played because it was fun and we enjoyed it. There was always some team with way more resources, better equipment, more practice, better skis, or a faster car, it might just be me, but I love simply competing, regardless of the outcome. I find it very satisfying to give something 100% of my effort.

[IKE]

Originally Posted by JamesCH95

In my mind there are two types of teams playing first:
.

You really should expand your mind. There are many many many shades of gray between your black and white. Wanting to do well doesn't mean that you can't have fun. Wanting to have fun doesn't mean that you want to do well.
In my mind there are tons of shades of not only black and white, but electric blue, tie-die rainbow, and safety green. While it is important to not allow yourself to fall into the extrememes of competitiveness, it is also important to have a drive to succeed (at whatever your goals are). The two groups you talk about are likely to be a minority with most teams falling somewhere in-between.

[John Wanninger]

Do I admire (and envy) the resources of time, talent, experience and funding some teams have? You bet I do …. almost as much as I admire their energy, commitment and the help and the inspiration that they provide, the wow factor, and the excellence that they model for all of us.

Great teams are fun to play with and against (or to just watch and be awed). Sure, because these teams are so good they are going to be tough to beat. They keep raising the bar, which means in order to be competitive you will need to accomplish more. The challenge these teams provide us drives us to improve, and pushes us to try things and to do things we never before thought possible. And whether or not we are awarded in the course of the season, at its end our team will look back, and we’ll look at one another, and we will wonder how we were able to accomplish what we did.

And while accomplishment is not always measured by wins and losses or by award totals, sustainability may be. One difficulty that I’m sure many of you can relate to occurs, when after an Event, a friend, coworker or sponsor who isn’t intimately involved in FIRST asks, ”How did you do?” Because whether we’ve won or lost, any explanation I might offer would never be able to tell the story of what we got out of that event, or the season.

In the short attention span world we live in, we may have 20 seconds, or 20 words, to tell our story and to convey our accomplishments. For our sponsors and supporters who must communicate with the less enlightened outside world, it is much easier for them to gain support for our program when they can use those 20 words (or seconds) to talk about victories and awards. Even though we all may be “winners”, like it or not, awards certainly do help to validate a team's achievements for the purpose of attracting (and retaining) sponsors, mentors, and team members.

[Bharat Nain]

I'd like to think that FIRST is a microcosm of the real world. There are lessons we learn that can stay with us forever. As a student, I used FIRST as a training ground to mold myself into the person I am today. Over the passage of time, here are a few lessons I have learned:


You cannot be stuck up about winning. In real life and in competition. If you want to be a true winner, you have to learn to have an internal reference point. What I mean is you have to learn to compete with yourself and not with the outside world. As others have stated, FIRST is not a level playing field and teams have various levels of resources and there is no way every team build a championship winning robot. However, what you can do is ask yourself "With the resources available, have I done the best I can do? Have I out-done my previous performances?". If the answer to that is Yes, I am happy. This has helped me tremendously in my professional development and taught me a lot about working under pressure and limited resources.

I believe Gracious Professionalism is one of the most misunderstood concepts these days. If I am going to compete on the playing field, I want to compete against the best possible opponents to challenge me or else there is no room for my growth. How am I supposed to know how good I really am if I am not playing against the hardest/smartest possible opponents? Gracious Professionalism is helping my partners and opponents be the best they possibly can off the field and Gracious Professionalism is competing at my best on the field. You help yourself also by helping your opponents.

Oftentimes, successful (however you define that) teams give very valuable advice to the rest of the community. One thing my team has preached for many years is keeping it simple and working within your resources. If the game requires a robot to perform 3 tasks, you are better off performing 2 tasks very well as opposed to all 3 not-as-well.

What I am trying to get at is - there are comparisons between sports and FIRST. There are similarities and lessons to be learned. Sports teaches some better (competing, winning etc) than others (Gracious Professionalism). In a world of science and technology, principles such as GP can be very valuable. It is what you take from it and it is about keeping things in the right perspective. It can be about winning but the more importantly how you win. What lessons did you learn as you won?

Hope that some makes sense.

-Bharat

[sgreco]

Originally Posted by Andrew Schreiber

I think maybe that is the reason that FIRST hasn't been more successful; So many of us, it seems, are in it for the wrong reasons.

I wouldn't say entering a competition to win is the wrong reason to enter.

All in all I do agree with your post, but I would prefer not to downplay the importance of the competitive aspect.

The competition is really fun, despite all the fun and I've had in other aspects, the competition was the my enlightening moment where I decided FIRST was really something I wanted to do, which resulted in my aspirations to become a mechanical engineer. If my team wasn't going all out to win in 2007, the competition would not have been have as fun or inspiring.

FIRST's primary purpose is to Inspire and the competitive aspect plays an integral role in this. If people want to be competitive and do what they can to win, let them do it without others complaining.

Going back to how I agree with most of your post...It's important that the values and goals of FIRST are not lost in the desire to win, but I feel like this certainly is not the case at this point. If it becomes the case further down the road, I'll be more than happy to skeptically look at over competition, but for right now, I see no problems.

Considering the expence of FIRST it's amazing its as successful as it is today...but it's not random, there's a reason...It's because most of the things FIRST has done they've done right. I wouldn't look skeptically upon lack of success even compared to potential. Consider all of the people FIRST has affected. In my opinion, that's nothing but success.

I agree very much about people giving up, or not giving up though. Honestly my team has been getting competitively worse, our best years were 2007 and 2008, but our team has contiued to grow, we've worked hard and have a bigger effect on the community and inspired more people. You don't have to win to inspire, which is where I agree with you, but the competition is really important and really fun (as described above).

[Ian Curtis]

Why would you name your organization US FIRST if you didn't intend to win a competition of some sort?

While the United States Foundation for Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology has clearly changed over the past 21 years, I think competition is a perfectly healthy and rather important component of the program. It's unfortunate that some of the teams that really get it get dragged through the mud annually, but I perennial champions in any sport get the same sort of treatment. If Lance Armstrong didn't have 7 yellow jerseys, would he be accused of using steroids? If Micheal Phelps didn't win 8 gold medals, would he be accused of steroid use? If the New England Patriots didn't keep winning Superbowl titles in the early 2000s, would they be accused of all sorts of rule breaking? Aren't the Yankees disliked because they've won the World Series too many times?

I think it unfortunately comes with being an elite athlete, engineer, FIRST team, etc. People don't like to lose, but whining is a whole lot easier than training harder, studying more, or spending your off-season prototyping.

[Jack Jones]

I am from Michigan, home of the Lions. For anyone who doesn't know about it the Lions stink. I don't mean rotten eggs I mean like students on a 14 hr bus ride to Atlanta with broken AC stench. You don't hear them complaining about how some team (I don't know football) wins all the time. In fact, you hear them have the attitude of, "We are going to keep trying." You know, I bet they know they can't win the Superbowl right now but I bet that doesn't affect how they play or train. I bet they watch what other teams do and try to emulate it. I bet they don't sit around on the football forums griping about how the Packers (know nothing about football!) only win because have more money or because they have more people. Why the heck do I see that in FIRST?

I don’t think the Lions situation is at all similar to that of an aspiring FIRST team. Their regular season does not entail being paired at random with two other football teams. Their playoffs do not consist of three wild card teams going up against two conference winners and a lesser team of their choice. They never see the Viking fans wearing cheese hats way early in the season to drive home the foregone conclusion that together the Vikings and Packers will dominate the NFC North.

[Akash Rastogi]

Originally Posted by Jack Jones

I don’t think the Lions situation is at all similar to that of an aspiring FIRST team. Their regular season does not entail being paired at random with two other football teams. Their playoffs do not consist of three wild card teams going up against two conference winners and a lesser team of their choice. They never see the Viking fans wearing cheese hats way early in the season to drive home the foregone conclusion that together the Vikings and Packers will dominate the NFC North.

Oh come on now, as much as I like Detroit in hockey, there's no way I can support the Lions. Lol but ok fine maybe NFL analogies don't always work with FRC, I'll give you that much.

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Red Wings <3

[Mike Schreiber]

Originally Posted by Jack Jones

I don’t think the Lions situation is at all similar to that of an aspiring FIRST team. Their regular season does not entail being paired at random with two other football teams. Their playoffs do not consist of three wild card teams going up against two conference winners and a lesser team of their choice. They never see the Viking fans wearing cheese hats way early in the season to drive home the foregone conclusion that together the Vikings and Packers will dominate the NFC North.

You're right. The LIONS are not at all similar to an ASPIRING FIRST team, but this thread was not about the fact that football teams don't cooperate or cheer for each other. Professional sports teams are a good analogy to FIRST because the level of competition is high and there are teams that are very elite and blow everyone else out of the water. But you don't see them whining nearly as much as FIRST teams whine. I have seen some liberal interpretations of Gracious Professionalism this year; I'm not a fan.