[Brian Maher]

Originally Posted by Mr V

Note just because a team accepted a waitlist position does not mean that they had less points than the teams that qualified on points. Two seasons ago there was a team in the PNW that received and accepted a wait list spot on the first day of DCMP. By the end of DCMP they did earn enough points to qualify but since they already had a spot their points spot was passed on to the next team.

While this is technically true (it happened to 303, 3637, and 5404 in MAR this year), I think that for the purposes of analyzing this proposal, Antonio's assumption should be used.
Say team A is above the points cutoff and team B is directly below it. If team A receives a waitlist spot, team B qualifies for Champs. While team A technically received a waitlist spot and team B earned a spot on district points, team B only earned their spot because team A received a waitlist spot. In this regard, I think it makes more sense to categorize team B as the waitlist team than team A because team B would not have earned a spot if it weren't for the waitlist.

Originally Posted by AGPapa

Either regional waitlist teams are doing well enough to pull up the average or district points aren't doing that a good a job of sending the best teams.

My hypothesis is that districts are much better than regionals at qualifying competitive teams for Champs. I think the waitlist picks up the slack with qualifying good regional teams who missed champs because they were not on the right alliance to win/make finals and didn't win a culture award. Many of these teams, if they were in a district, could have easily qualified for champs.