I don't know much about sports, but are there any leagues in any other
games where advancement is based on a secret formula derived from
publicly available statistics?
The ICT qualification page says:
"The final result is adjusted by overall finish so that it is rare for
teams to be invited ahead of those that finished ahead of them at
their Sectional."
But why not make it *impossible*? Instead of finding the top N teams
with the highest S-values and then inviting exactly those teams, you
could go through the list of those top N teams, count up the number
that played at each site, and invite that number of teams from each
site -- according to their order of finish at the SCT.
Inviting lower-ranked teams ahead of higher-ranked teams just makes
players and coaches and fans think that there's something illegitimate
about the secret formula. I don't understand why, after much
consideration, NAQT has decided that the best course is to encourage
SCT hosts to rank the teams by order of finish, while also insisting
that rankings within an SCT will NOT necessarily be respected in
issuing ICT invitations.