I am sitting the fence about whether I think the 2:22ish group should be using the OT as their motivator. I recognize this has been the case historically (I took a shot at it). But I think there should be something different motivating this group in the future. I think the majority of the angst here is because USATF is trying to move us to this future before having established a new motivator, which is a BIG mistake.
The more I read about peoples' histories before they became solid marathoners, the more I think we need to keep the 32:00 10k guys in the sport after college.
There are countless examples of people who kind of sucked (a relative term) before going on to be pretty good marathoners. Avocado's Number has stated he was an 11:00 2 miler in HS (not even fast enough for the NFL!) And he went on to run under 2:20 (I didn't see an exact time so maybe even 2:18?). Sell famously didn't crack 10 in HS and has gone 2:10 so far...
Nobody knows what they can do for a marathon until they have trained for it for a few years. We lose many of our best marathoners the day college gets out and they are on their own without a coach, any support, and any reasonable goal to shoot for. If we really want to see the depth of the 70s and early 80s, it isn't going to happen because USATF moved the standard from 2:22 to 2:19. It's going to happen because a whole bunch of 32:00 type guys start training their butts off in search of something.
Why are these 32:00 guys important? If you read any of the threads from the old-school guys they often cite the competition they had in their races as a big factor. You couldn't go to any reasonable sized marathon and walk away with it in 2:25. You had about 5-10 guys going 2:20. You had to be on top of your game. These guys who are not olympic caliber were keeping all the races honest. Maybe they were 5th-10th place all the time, but at the same time nobody won a marathon with anything slower than 2:20.
For some odd reason, the 2:22 OTQ has been the brass ring everyone has grabbed for. If USATF wants to raise the standards (which is a positive thing at face value), they should do it without eliminating the brass ring. My feeling is the provisional qualifier is a great interim idea, and over the longer term, USATF should move to promote its marathon championship and use place-based qualifiers from that (and maybe while they are at it they can practice managing a 100+ person marathon so they can handle a field size over 65).