I had a similar thought while the field was having issues:
I think the field should include 6 (maybe less for cost reasons I guess) CRIO's hooked up to 6 radios, configured as imaginary team numbers 9996-9999. Program each CRIO in a different language and fit it with some basic code (or maybe exhaustive code using alot of functions as a 'test') and these boxes become the gold standard for proper field functionality.
If a field has issues, hookup the boxBots, if they don't work then you know it's the field; if they do work then that gives the field personel a little more certainty that the field is not at fault.
It's a bit of an expensive solution to start, but these can be used multiple years with fairly minimal maintenance, and it removes a variable from the equation, because it's easy to blame the robot/team that had problems.
(edit for sounding less like a jerk
having a rookie bracket of sorts is a cool idea; but I don't know that it would be able to solve field problems in advance, I suspect having a rookie team fail on the field is more than likely going to be attributed to that team than the field).