I just finished the book Word Freak, by Stefan Fatsis, about competitive Scrabble. I heavily recommend it - those who read this board will probably enjoy it a little more given its similarities to quizbowl (read it and you'll probably find personalities in our little world who resemble G.I. Joel, Joe Edley, and Lester Schonbrun - I, personally, would be the guy writing quizbowl-themed show tunes in Atlantic City at 1AM). About 75% through the book, Fatsis comments that it's impossible to reduce the game to mathematical certainty, and that even thirty-one games - more than the usual quizbowl tournament - can turn on a few lucky plays. Turning to quizbowl, if you were to play ten games against every team in the field, with no playoff, the tournament still wouldn't necessarily be fair - it might come closer, but a tournament could turn on the distribution for a specific round. Or a weak moderator. Or a malfunctioning buzzer system. Or some gamesmanship. It's not fair. At some level, it's luck. You might slowly eliminate luck by playing millions of games, but it would never hit zero. I could have been a brilliant equities trader with movie star looks and killer biceps who plays piano better than Billy Joel, or I could be in a North Korean hard labor camp. Life isn't fair. One could also argue that part of skill at quizbowl involves being the "best when it counts" - on such a system, a single-elimination system would actually be fairer. Mental toughness and all that - and if Michigan loses to Bovinia State in the first round, well, tough. Or what if Florida goes 12-0, then gets blown out in its last three games, when UCLA drops its first four games on the last tossup, then annihilates everyone (Florida included)? Who's better? What's "fairer"? College Bowl, this year, appeared to eliminate approaches which favored finishing higher rather than lower (the "lucky loser" of Region IV). In each case, teams knew what the rules were beforehand. If you win, you were a little lucky, and a little good. If you lose, you're a little less - maybe less lucky, maybe less good, maybe both. Such is not compromising the fairness of the rankings.
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