BattleBots Collegiate Championship (partially lost unaired spin-off of robot combat TV show; 2009)

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BattleBots Logo.jpg

The BattleBots logo as seen in the opening of the pilot episode.

Status: Partially Lost

BattleBots Collegiate Championship was a spin-off series of then cancelled American robot combat game show BattleBots, which was set to air on CBS College Sports in 2009.

The Event

The BattleBots event, held in Vallejo, California, ran from April 21st through the 26th. The event gave host to three tournaments: The High School Championship (120lb), the Collegiate Championship (120lb), and the Pro Championship (220lb). The BattleBots arena was much smaller than the one used in the Comedy Central era, instead looking somewhat similar in size and design to the one used to host the annual BattleBots IQ tournaments in years past. The hazards also had a fair share of changes, with the pulverizers being operated by the competitors, the hellraisers and killsaws making a return, and the screws having completely serrated edges.

Several veteran builders from the Comedy Central era returned for the event, whether it was to compete or commit to staff roles. Mark Setrakian and Peter Abrahamsen (of The Master and Ronin fame) participated as judges, and Brian Nave (of Phrizbee/Shrederator fame) assumed the role of chief tech inspector. Among the returning competitors were Team Whyachi (BABS, Falcon, Warrior SKF), Team Nightmare (Breaker Box), Team Mutant Robots (Root Canal), The Bot Dudes (Hugs & Kisses), Operation Boilermaker (Counter-Revolution), Team Think Tank (VD6.0), Team XD (Subzero), Eric Stoliker (Bender), and Team Loki (Surgeon General).

Planned Airing

The Collegiate Championship was eventually picked up by CBS Sports, who set up a weekly airing schedule starting from December 10th.[1] However, CBS prematurely dropped the show after being unable to find any companies willing to fill in the show's commercial slots.[2] FOX Sports later picked it up along with the Pro Championship, only to drop it as well for possibly the same reasons.[3] No other network picked up the show since, thus preventing the show from getting off the ground. Had the show been aired, it would've been the first televised robot combat event since Series 7 of Robot Wars in 2004, a feat that would later be achieved 2 years later when Killer Robots: RoboGames 2011 was aired on the Science Channel.

Availability

10 days prior to the planned airing, Autodesk Inventor (the main sponsor of the event) uploaded several raw clips of robot fights and interviews taken in the event, along with footage of fights from the original show.

On July 27th, 2010, the official BattleBots YouTube channel released seven raw cuts of fights involving the winner of the High School Championship, The Blender. Likewise, the winner of the Pro Championship, Brutality, had all of its fights uploaded to YouTube by the same channel on August 24th.

On September 17th, 2010, the official BattleBots YouTube channel uploaded the pilot episode of the BattleBots Collegiate Championship. To this day, the pilot episode remains as the only episode of the spin-off series to ever meet the public eye. Although the winner of the Collegiate division was never officially revealed by BattleBots themselves, the college affiliated with the winning team revealed on Facebook that the tournament victor was none other than U.W. Stout's Falcon, operated by Clint and Jake Ewert.

Gallery

The pilot episode of the BattleBots Collegiate Championship.

The raw footage cut of the High School Championship final between The Blender and Tin Shredder.

The raw footage cut of the Pro Championship final between Brutality and Root Canal.

Falcon vs. DracUCLA, the only available footage of the eventual collegiate division champion in action.

See Also

External Link

References

  1. ↑ https://forums.penny-arcade.com/discussion/105990/battlebots-2009-coming-whenever-enough-commercial-spots-get-sold
  2. ↑ https://web.archive.org/web/20110707214334/https://battlebots.com/college-show.html
  3. ↑ http://web.archive.org/web/20160719213420/http://thirdlawsports.com/2016/07/14/battlebots-season-that-never-was/
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