[Lil' Lavery]

There are too many issues with this system for it to be workable, and the actual changes would likely be relatively minor.

What happens when one captain accepts an invitation from another captain? Does the 9th seed automatically inherit the 8th draft position, as they do now? Wouldn't that defeat much of the purpose of changing positions? Do they inherit the vacated draft position, regardless of where they would want to select? Do all the remaining captains choose draft positions again?

More importantly, how is the bracket layout decided? Is the "#1 alliance" still the #1 seed even if the #1 seed picks in another location? What happens when the #6 captain picks the 4th ranked team, and they accept? Is it the #6 alliance or the #4 alliance? Or is the "#1 alliance" the team with the 1st selection, regardless of what rank they were? That would introduce a whole new mechanic of "gaming the system," where lower ranked captains could intentionally select draft positions to match up against other captains they feel they would fare well against. For instance, if I know the #3 captain is "weak" and they've selected to pick 5th, I'll select to pick 4th so I can play against them. This scenario would create a disadvantage for the 1st ranked team, as they would be able to chose who they're playing against.

How does this impact district ranking points for alliance selection and alliance captaincy? Does the #1 seed still receive the 16 points for being the #1 captain, or would they get the lesser points for being a lower captain? It would create further disincentive for, say, the #3 captain (14 points) to accept the, say, 5th invitation (12 points).

Few teams possess the scouting sophistication to fully take advantage of this system anyway. And given the very short time span between when rankings are finalized and alliance selection occurs, no team has enough time to truly interpret the data and alliance permutations to determine their ideal draft position.