I used to be a descending order list guy. Then I started looking at the wind readings listed for all the sprint events. Start to look at what is getting in the 100 and 200 events and look at the wind readings. Too much can happen in a 100m race run at 1.2 positive wind vs the 3.7 that still counts for NCAA qualifying and hundreths of seconds are separating dozens of athletes. There needs to be a way to run off and earn advancement.
Alas, there simply will be no absolutely equal system. The east is way more populated with schools and people. In some events it shows. but it really only shows at the bottom.
The current system captures enough atheltes to allow that noone who could/should be at NCAA finals is missed, and still gives opportunity to those who might not EVER make it to NCAAs to have a post season beyond conference. To me that is good.
The meet size appears to be too big and so we shall see how that plays out this week especially in the field events.
The Stanford meets haven't really gotten smaller because of regionals. People are still flying out there to run fast and PR and to have something to market to recruits.
So who knows.
I firmly believe the rich are trying to get richer and will use their power to make the sport as advantageous for them as possible.
All these major conferences are talking of expanding and pretty soon there will be about 50 schools that have any chance to doing anything at all athletically in any sport. Everyone else might as well become Division 3.
Texas A&M knows they have to recruit against LSU and UCLA. they are fine with that. They would rather just deal with them then have to worry about La Tech, North Texas and UC Irvine. If they can run those smaller schools out of business, then they will make their job easier.