The BattleBots Collegiate Championship (also referred to as the College Division or more informally as the College series) was a BattleBots-sanctioned event for 120lb (middleweight) robots held in April 2009 within the Mare Island Naval Shipyard of Vallejo, California. It was one of three divisions which made up the 2009 BattleBots Championships.
Eleven robots competed in the tournament, each fielded by college and university teams. Several veteran builders from the Comedy Central era were also involved in various staffing roles. Mark Setrakian and Peter Abrahamson (of The Master and Ronin fame respectively) participated as Judges, and Brian Nave (of Phrizbee and Shrederator fame) assumed the role of chief safety and tech inspector. Notable entries included Falcon (entered and operated by members of Team Whyachi) and Category 5, whose captain Andrea Suarez would later compete in the televised show with Witch Doctor. Other builders (including Donald Hutson and Christian Carlberg) served as mentors for the primarily student-led teams. The role of emcee and scriptwriter was held by Edward Roski, father to Trey Roski.[1]
The tournament adopted a double-elimination format, similar to those from previous live events such as the 2004 NPC Charity Open and in keeping with the concurrently-run Pro and High School Championships. Robots defeated in the main rounds would be relegated to a losers' bracket' run in parallel, with the aim of staying in the competition and securing a place in the overall final against the best-placed robot in the Winners' Bracket. Such was the nature of the format, that robots in the losers' bracket often required more fights to reach the final than those in the winners' bracket. As the Collegiate Championship contained the fewest robots of any of the BattleBots 2009 Championships, a number of robots received automatic byes at different stages, while the losers' bracket only began at the second round.[2]
Alongside the Pro and High School Championships, the 2009 Collegiate Championship took place in a variant of the large BattleBox arena, though with more compact dimensions comparable to those for the annual BattleBots IQ tournaments held in years prior. The hazards received their own set of changes over their Comedy Central-era equivalents, with two Pulverizers per arena side being operated by the competing teams, and the Screws being redesigned with completely serrated edges. The Killsaws and Hellraisers would also make their return, their functionality identical to previous versions.
The event was won by Team Blue Devil and the University of Wisconsin - Stout (UW-Stout) with their drum spinner Falcon, which defeated the University of California San Diego's Triton in both the winners' bracket and overall finals.[2]
Attempted Broadcasting Deal and Availability[]
The Collegiate Championship was initially set to air on the CBS College Sports network in December 2009, in Greg Munson and Trey Roski's attempt to reintroduce BattleBots on television following the end of the Comedy Central run. It was confirmed by various contemporary sources that it would be broadcast as a weekly multi-part series consisting of four episodes, premiering on December 10 and concluding on December 31.[3][4][5] However, due to a lack of advertisers needed to fill in the series' commercial slots, this did not go ahead, and CBS College Sports declined to air the Collegiate Championship.
- "Unfortunately today we have some bad news for you (but some good news too). Commercial spots for the College series could not be sold, and consequently the series had to be pulled from the schedule. This has nothing to do with the show itself. Indeed, the people we have shown the shows to LOVE it. We even got a standing ovation at the Autodesk party last week in Vegas. Our feeling is with the economy, and the relatively small audience base of the network, commercial spots could not be sold. Rest assured, we're doing our best to make the show available to you."
- — Official BattleBots statement, concerning the cancelation of televised airings for the 2009 Collegiate Championship[6]
In a statement concerning the Collegiate Championship's withdrawal from CBS's schedules, BattleBots announced the agreement of a new deal with FOX Television Studios, which would see both the Collegiate and Pro Championships being aired by FOX Sports. However, this also fell through, delaying BattleBots' return to television until the premiere of World Championship I on ABC in 2015.
In September 2010, the official BattleBots YouTube channel released the entire first episode of the Collegiate Championship, the only episode to be publicly released in full.[7] Much of the remaining 2009 Collegiate, Pro and High School Championship content is considered to be lost media.[8]
Greg Munson spoke more about the attempts to get the 2009 Championship televised in a March 2023 episode of the RoboCast podcast.[1]
- "It just fizzled out... Trey took it upon himself to edit, you know, just make a ragtag team of editors to do it all. We did the voiceover and we sucked."
- — Greg Munson on the ill-fated attempt to air BattleBots' on the College Sports network
Competitors[]
Source: Official BattleBots 2009 Championship Match Results.[2]
| Competitor | Builder/Team |
|---|---|
| Bear Punch | Missouri State University |
| Category 5 | University of Miami |
| Cattitude | University of Cincinnati |
| Chunk | CalPoly SLObotics |
| DracUCLA | University of California |
| Falcon | Team Blue Devil |
| JailBrake | Bradley University |
| Pharaoh | Team Pharaoh |
| Rhino | Metal Twisters |
| Shark Tooth | CSULB Robotics |
| Triton | UCSD Triton Robotix |
Results[]
Source: Official BattleBots 2009 Championship Match Results.[2]
NOTE: Matches in italics denote those aired in the publicly-released Episode 1, or with footage publicly released by BattleBots and/or Autodesk Inventor.
| Round 1 |
|---|
| Chunk vs. Bear Punch |
| Category 5 vs. JailBrake |
| Falcon vs. Pharaoh |
| Round 2 |
| Chunk vs. Triton |
| Category 5 vs. Rhino |
| Cattitude vs. Shark Tooth |
| Falcon vs. DracUCLA[9] |
| Losers' Bracket, Round 2 |
| Bear Punch vs. DracUCLA |
| Shark Tooth vs. JailBrake |
| Pharaoh vs. Chunk |
| Round 3 |
| Triton vs. Category 5 |
| Falcon vs. Cattitude |
| Losers' Bracket, Round 3 |
| Shark Tooth vs. Bear Punch |
| Pharaoh vs. Rhino |
| Round 4 |
| Falcon vs. Triton |
| Losers' Bracket, Round 4 |
| Category 5 vs. Shark Tooth |
| Pharaoh vs. Cattitude |
| Losers' Bracket, Round 5 |
| Category 5 vs. Pharaoh |
| Losers' Bracket, Round 6 |
| Triton vs. Category 5 |
| Final |
| Falcon vs. Triton |
Trivia[]
- The first episode marks the only known onscreen appearance of Gear Crow, an experimental bipedal robot built by Donald Hutson for demonstrations at the 2009 Championships. A brief clip of the robot raising its body and opening its jaws features during break bumpers and the closing credits sequence, though it is unknown whether Gear Crow appears in any of the remaining unaired episodes.
References[]
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 RoboCast #136 — BattleBots: Legends - Greg Munson, 1:02:00
- ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 2.3 Official BattleBots 2009 Championship Match Results
- ↑ 'Undergraduate Team Dukes it Out in 'BattleBots' Competition', Roxana Popescu, UCSD, November 23 2009 (archived September 14 2022
- ↑ 'BattleBots 2009 - Coming Whenever Enough Commercial Spots Get Sold', Penny Arcade discussion board concerning the 2009 Championships
- ↑ 'The BattleBots Season That Never Was', Sterling Brown, Third Law Sports, 14 July, 2016 (archived 19 July, 2016)
- ↑ 'BattleBots College Show', BattleBots (archived 7 July, 2011)
- ↑ 'BattleBots Collegiate Championship Episode #1', BattleBots (YouTube), uploaded 17 September, 2010
- ↑ https://lostmediawiki.com/BattleBots_Collegiate_Championship_(partially_lost_unaired_spinoff_of_robot_combat_TV_show;_2009)
- ↑ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=be4PeZZHI_Q
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