[DampRobot]

Isn't the solution for this problem a bit obvious? If there was someone with a FIRST volunteer shirt to walk around and tell off the most egregious violators of the "no saving seats" rule, I'm sure a lot of the motivation for the stampede to the stands would be gone.

In terms of saving seats, I'm not talking about a kid for holding a seat for their friend who's in the bathroom, I'm talking about the one person defending a huge block of seats like the people just trying to get off their feet are zombies coming to attack them. Those are the people that are causing a problem, and breaking a rule by the letter and in spirit.

Most teams get up early and run to the stands because they know that if they don't: a, they won't get good seats to watch/scout/cheer, and b, they won't be able to get them later, because those seats will continue to be saved. If they knew that they could simply sit where there is room, rather than where other teams have not claimed, teams wouldn't be so motivated to get up at the crack of dawn or sprint to the stands. They would know that there would likely be plenty of fine seats left, and as they day went on, they could move up into better unoccupied seats.

Of course, a lottery system or multiple coordinated entrances would be good ideas, but they'd likely take a fair bit of organization and work to implement. I'm not sure that they get to the root cause either, that people are very motivated to get to the stands as fast as physically possible to save seats for their team.