[Kevin Sevcik]

<SOAPBOX>
The no outside food bit is actually pretty standard for a lot of venues. Usually you can thank Aramark or some other catering service for that. As for candy... well candy is dangerous when people unthinkingly throw it into the crowds.

And saving seats? First off, they're asking teams to clear the pits as much as possible, so most of your team should be in the stands. If you need a few extra seats in the stands, just leave a few open in the middle of your group, and social dynamics will save the seats for you. Besides, there's two options. Either there are enough seats for everyone and you shouldn't have to save them, or there aren't enough seats for everyone and you should let other people sit down since they might have a round coming up.

And banners... Sponsors shell out large amounts of money to put on regionals, and I think they earn the right to not have to compete with other banners for just team sponsors. If it's a banner for just your team, well you should have enough spirit to stand out without it. And flags tend to block the view of people behind you, or worse the video crew behind you. I work scoring at Lonestar and I've seen it happen and it's just silly.

Mostly, I'm saying all these rules do make sense if you calm down a bit and look at them. They're intended to make the competitions more venue and audience friendly so FIRST will have an easier time expanding. They're not arbitrary and certainly not an attempt to crush team spirit, cause what would the point of that be? FIRST knows spirit is vital to the competition. If they didn't, they might've enacted MUCH more restrictive rules.
</SOAPBOX>