[Jon Stratis]

Originally Posted by AGPapa

Under the old system the North would send ~265 teams from district areas, but under this system they'll only send 201. Given that district teams are much more competitive than waitlist teams, this will seriously decrease the quality of championship play.

I don't think that analysis applies here. Michigan (for example) sent 76 teams. if ~56% made it to the playoffs, that's only ~43 teams. How competitive are the other 33 teams when compared to the waitlist spots? Because this change doesn't really affect those 43 teams - they'll get in either way. It's the team's further down in the district points that are affected, and I haven't seen an analysis that really tells us how competitive those teams are, when compared to the waitlist teams. Do that same analysis comparing the achievement of all waitlist teams against the lower 10% of district teams (sorted by district points), and then we can talk about how competitive or not this decision is.