[EricH]

fuzzy, I think the #1 biggest problem with the elimination of the area championships and just going by points is not an easy one to deal with.

How on earth do you figure out how many events the points count from, and which events?

You could do first event. Covers every team out there, but quite often those teams aren't at top form. (Or you get the rushes to Week 1 and Week N (the last week) events.)

You could do first two events. Now you need to deal with the fact that at least half the teams don't do two right now. Part of that will be offset by using a 2-district-event model similar to MI and MAR. Some of it won't. Even in MI and MAR, some teams will only go to one event due to travel distance, time, or cost, or something else comes up, or, or... Some teams that would undoubtedly be well-qualified for Championship won't have the point total to qualify--and there isn't a good way to make up the difference.

You could do average. There's a discussion on the teams that didn't qualify but should really be there--"The Rest of the Best" or something like that, where I lay out my objection to the average method. Short version, it heavily favors the single-event teams (and someone else came up with it favoring multi-event teams).

It's not an easy problem to solve by any means. That's why we're stuck with a 2-tier system until someone comes up with a system that deals with the varying numbers of events, the "good enough to go but didn't qualify" (though that'll be helped by a point-based system), and the current auto-qualifying regional awards. (Championship auto-qualifiers should stay as-is--HoF, defending champs, original and sustaining teams.) Again, not an easy problem. A 2-tier system buys time, and hopefully generates discussion on how to solve the problem in the optimal way.