I agree this is all improbable. I specifically said that this would only be a potential idea if Footlocker was no longer around to compete for drawing athletes to their meet, and I don't see that happening any time soon.
I mentioned the third California team because they finished below the others, correct. Why would you expect anything different? It's not cherry picking, it's pointing out the performance of one of the three teams.
Here is a Top-22 power merge for the California state meet: 132 Great Oak, 140 Claremont, 148 Vista Murrieta, 152 Granada, 219 Mission Viejo
Here is a Top-22 power merge for the NXR Southwest meet: 86 Mountain Vista, 131 Battle Mountain, 136 Niwot, 138 Lone Peak
Here are the results from NXN for those teams:
219 Niwot, 231 Vista Murrieta, 249 Great Oak, 253 Battle Mountain, 280 Claremont, 290 Mountain Vista
... to me, it looks like Lone Peak and Granada were very similar teams. Both were good enough to be in the field, and both would have potentially placed in the top 10. Both could also potentially finish no better than Liverpool did, however.
I think Granada was a good team this year. I don't think it's clear that they were far and away a better team than the four At-Large teams that were selected, or a couple other that might have been in consideration but were left out. I know others on here believe that Downers Grove South IL should have been in the field for example - they were a good team with a good resume, and maybe they would have been competing for a Top-10 finish if they were selected as well. Another team would be Hellgate MT. The three teams that beat them all finished in the top 11 at NXN, and it was a very close race between the #2-4 teams at the regional meet: 54 Summit, 106 Jesuit, 118 Boise, 121 Hellgate. At NXN, it was 120 Summit, 273 Boise, 278 Jesuit.
That makes 7 teams already that I can come up with that were potentially as good or better than Granada (the four teams that were selected, plus Lone Peak and DGS and Hellgate). It seems to me there were 8 solid candidates, and only half of them could potentially be selected, meaning there were going to be a lot of good teams left home. Good news is, if you reduce the number of regional races and save all those extra team spots for an At-Large pool, more of those teams could be on the line at NXN. And if you can make the NXR meets even more accessible while reducing the number of regional races? That's even better! Some might say it's a win-win situation.
As for individuals at NXN... it wouldn't really be a national championship if you are missing individuals like Alexa Efraimson, Sarah Baxter, Kelsey Chmiel, Haley Pierce, Chelsey Sveinsson, Sarah Anders, etc.. Or Casey Clinger, Brodey Hasty, Tanner Anderson, Kai Wilmot, Craig Lutz, etc. Those kind of athletes who are on great teams but can also contend for a national title individually. That is why it needs to be a unified championship. Yes, the talent is more spread out in HS than it is in college - there are a lot more high schools in the nation than there are colleges, and kids aren't typically recruited to go to a specific school, so that makes perfect sense.