Fun comments. Thanks!
I decided to go ahead and look at the top seed alliance effect. That is, how does a team's rank change depending on if it is with or against the top seed team during a match, or not in a match at all with the top seed team? To do the analysis, I essentially took out every match that the top seed was in; marked which teams were with, against, or not in a match with the top seed; and then looked at how the new rankings changed versus the official rankings.
See below for the Silicon Valley (SV) and North Star (NS) Regionals. I took out team 254 from the SV Regional and 2826 from the NS Regional.
In the SV Regional, a team's overall rank increased by about 6.55+/-5.81 places if it was in an alliance with 254. But, a team's overall rank decreased by 5.87+/-3.49 places if the team did not have a match with 254.
In the NS Regional, a team's overall rank increased by about 8.05+/-8.68 places if it was in an alliance with 2826. But, a team's overall rank decreased by 5.79+/-2.58 places if the team did not have a match with 2826.
Ya, I would say this confirms the hypothesis that being in an alliance with the top team is going to boost a team's overall ranking. Likewise, not being in a match with the top team does not help.
Ether and Doug, I'll look into making some plots tomorrow with the OPR, including attaching the code for getting the data (just a heads up, it's not totally automated). But, ya, could be interesting.