[Tim Arnold]

At the Florida regional (which some say has the hardest competition) the #3 seed won, while the #1 seed was defeated by #5 in semis.

Not else left to say that hasn't already been, but I agree that the top seeds are usually purely because of good/decent alliance pairing on both sides. I say this as being the #27th ranked seed and coming out in the second placed alliance.

Drawing out of a hat is a bad idea in my opinion, for more reasons than one. Just one that you probably didn't think of, many teams leave after qualifying matches if they are doing downright horrible/robot broken/whatever. Getting a random picked team would become just like playing the lotto... bah, just an all around bad idea in my opinion (sorry to your wife!).