[wjordan]

I wrote a script to try and compare the north champs to the south champs based on historical OPR, and here's what I found:

Here's percentile OPR at worlds for North teams and South teams:

Year	North			South		
	50th	75th	90th	50th	75th	90th
2004	44.82	56.59	70.47	32.14	46.97	64.60
2005	12.83	17.79	23.67	10.81	16.22	22.81
2006	15.20	23.38	33.03	12.39	19.94	27.46
*2007	-0.28	54.96	168.85	25.63	130.43	203.00
2008	21.51	32.25	41.92	17.10	25.05	36.73
2009	25.10	33.25	40.10	21.26	28.47	35.08
2010	2.22	3.81	4.90	1.91	3.27	4.32
2011	24.20	36.37	45.73	17.40	30.86	42.72
2012	13.20	18.38	25.27	9.90	16.53	25.58
2013	37.46	52.15	65.85	31.86	44.29	63.19
2014	51.69	68.34	85.10	46.57	62.57	81.38
2015	41.17	57.61	72.64	34.29	53.06	69.58
2016	37.20	45.28	54.27	31.66	40.23	49.52

And here's South OPR as a percent of North OPR at each percentile:

	50th	75th	90th
2004	71.71%	82.99%	91.67%
2005	84.25%	91.18%	96.34%
2006	81.54%	85.28%	83.14%
*2007	-9034%	237.31%	120.23%
2008	79.51%	77.66%	87.64%
2009	84.70%	85.62%	87.47%
2010	86.35%	85.76%	88.11%
2011	71.91%	84.85%	93.41%
2012	75.01%	89.97%	101.26%
2013	85.05%	84.93%	95.97%
2014	90.10%	91.56%	95.64%
2015	83.30%	92.11%	95.79%
2016	85.12%	88.84%	91.24%

A graph over time is attached. Based on this, I think it's pretty clear that the North champs is going to be the stronger event over Houston. While the top 10% of teams are fairly close between them, it's the North's much stronger middle tier that brings up the quality of play. Perhaps this is due to the fact that the North is mostly teams from districts, which have a tendency to improve the middle-tier teams over the regional model. The gap between the two regions has also stayed pretty consistent, despite the rise of powerful western teams such as 987 and 1678.

* I wasn't around for 2007, but does anyone know why the OPRs for that year are so out of whack?