Well, there's always the expedient of
bracketing... the lower teams are eliminated from the
championship and allowed to play amongst themselves for a few
rounds, while the higher teams... are also allowed to
play amongst themselves for a few rounds. Except that
some poor team always gets stuck as the last one in
the top bracket, but they usually aren't the type to
get discouraged by a painful series of
frequently-lopsided defeats, because they know they're being beaten
by the best... or something.