[EricH]

Let's take Andy Grady's idea of regions competing against each other. Each region (Northeast, South, Midwest, West) figures out their best robots, preferably enough for two alliances. How this is done is up to the imagination. Each region decides its alliances and sends them to a competition, say somewhere in neutral territory (a state that is not represented and is not a hot contender). At the competition, you have two divisions, and each plays round-robin style. The winners advance to a best-two-out-of-three type of playoff. The winner is declared to be from the best region. If, however, the winners are from the same region, that region is instantly acknowledged the best, and the event is over, unless someone wants to see who will win.

The winners will have the toughest regionals in their area, and it may be impossible to tell from this which regional is toughest.