There has been a request to explain why the bid allocations worked how they did I am happy to do that, and also explain why they are relatively fair in this case.

As someone who has unfortunately read all of the formatting documents from USA-U multiple times, i unfortunately know the process inside and out.

And, yes, the bid allocations aren't perfect, but the process does make sense. I write this as someone, who, like "thefan" on RSD, is not a fan of USA-U, and against most of the changes, the triple crown tour, etc. The reason i have read all the documents repeatedly, because, to be able to criticize the USA-U, you have to unfortunately understand what they are trying to do. The USA-U has done some good things for youth and high school ultimate, but on the whole what they've done for club ultimate is not the best. (and there are lots of reasons for this that would take way too long to write, but flex and people close to me know a few of them). With that said, the bid allocations to regionals are pretty fair.

Let's start with the obvious. The stated goal of the series is to crown a national champion. Any team that can get 10 (or is it 12?) people willing to shell out the money for USA-U dues is free to take a shot at this, and in exchange for the $500 the 10 or 12 of you pay or whatever, you get a magazine mailed to your houses, a dozen bumper stickers, and the right to vote for at least some of the board members, and the chance to play in other sanctioned tournaments if you want, which are becoming more numerous relative to unsanctioned ones for better and worse. The odds, increasingly, are becoming stacked against these teams, but still, just about anyone can enter sectionals and try to pit themselves against the best and see how far they get.

In a perfect world, you would have every team at nationals, and then everyone could compete against each other and see who is the best. Unfortunately, because it's hard to fit 50 rounds into 4 days, and there are issues with field sites, and you can only play one team at a time, they can't just have everyone at nationals. (there are a number of sports and not quite sports (crossword puzzles and other mental games), where this in fact happens).

Ultimate, unfortunately, is not one of those activities. So there are intermediate competitions. The number of teams and the number of days to determine who finishes more has constraints, and USA-U puts alot of thought into these constraints. I don't think they always get them right, but in this case they have decided 16 teams at nationals is the appropriate upper bound for club (too much bigger and you can't find many warm weather venues), and for all levels beyond the first level. (in college it's 20, which is an awkward number, but there are fewer divisions running simultaneously so they still have access to a decent number of sites).

In addition to considerations such as field space, they (USA-U) wants to give regionals some prestige in its own right, and also make sure that regionals is an event that will mostly have an appropriate level of competition. Again, they are trying to crown a national champion and find the right representatives to compete at nationals. So regionals is also not an event where everyone is welcome, and they hope to create a format that will do that. So to try to weed out the most hopeless teams, they have cutoffs for how many teams make regionals. They can be found in the club format here:

Size of Regionals Number of Registered Teams
8 teams 16 or fewer teams
10 teams 17-20 teams
12 teams 21-24 teams
16 teams 25 or more team

I don't personally love these allocations, but it's pretty easy to see that they want to weed out something resembling the bottom half, with a slight benefit of the doubt to teams right on the border. This is fair enough, because remember an 11 team region creates some ugly formatting issues, and the issue isn't just who makes regionals, but also creating the right formats to determine a national champion, so hence the HUGE desire to have regionals have an even number of teams (If you've ever read the 150 page monstrosity called the USA-U tournament format manual, you'd see this point drilled home, but I wouldn't wish that on anyone). These formats can sort of work in an imperfect way for sectionals where there's no choice as to the number of teams, and there are lots of bids in some cases anyway for regionals, but for regionals they try to restrict it to a few proven formats.

So fair enough, your region has 8 bids, now lets see how teams would have gotten allocated 2 seasons ago. Two seasons ago, it was like the US House of Representatives. This was the easiest and most painless way to do it. Take the number of teams and assign bids proportionately. So..... capital would have 6 teams (+scandal), you'd have 4. DC would get 4.8 and you'd get 3.2. Since .8 is a bigger number than .2, they'd get 5 bids and you'd get 3. This would leave you EXACTLY where you are now. Bummer. We remove scandal from the equation. 7 bids, dc still has more teams than Philly, so they get the extra spot to regionals. Whoops. That didn't help either.

One of the problems with this system was that it encouraged bid stuffing, and there would be rumors of teams getting subsidized to come out, or perhaps more nefariously allegations out of towners running college tournaments in the local market the same weekend as our sectionals (but not theirs), to try to suppress bids to not only regionals but nationals (which also had a size bid system to some degree).

One of the other problems, is that if one region became a hotbed of ultimate with several loaded teams, the only way to make the sections and regions more equitable would be to redraw the map, which takes committees, and can be as politically charged as redrawing congressional districts. Even this may not be enough, because quite simply in the last few years the couple hundred or so square miles of San Francisco should really have been their own region they've had so many absolutely loaded and semi-loaded teams across ALL THREE divisions, while other regions might have 4 or 5 states that only have 2-3 decent teams between them.

So there was an attempt to find a better way to allocate bids. That leads to the current process, which was probably an improvement on the old one. 8 bids to regionals. Minus one because the folks at USA-U think it's not fair to scandal that they have to win their section by a combined score of 52-1 or whatnot and it wastes everyone's time. So 7 bids now plus scandal is already in for the 8th spot.

There is still a size component to the process. It allocates for half of the remaining available bids plus one. I personally think this should be representative (like the old system), but instead usa-u has gone to try to make it more even, with the most populous section only getting one more bid. This is probably to prevent bid stuffing, but it also serves a useful purpose in parts of the country where populations are sparse, and travel times are long, that getting 10 sanctioned games is just not going to happen. Teams out in montana can either more or less fly everywhere, host their own event, or scrimmage themselves pretty much. So by having a size component it creates some allocation for pickup teams to think they have a chance.

In any event, there are 4 size bids. This is supposed to create some chances for pickup teams, or maybe teams that had a weak regular season in big sections. It also helps with geographic diversity and all of that. No matter though, these bids get split evenly, which is just as well because founders is the smaller section. You get 2 bids, capital gets 2. Now it has a strength component as well. In this case, USA-U assumes that the "size" bids will be claimed by the best ranked teams in a section. So out of the mix go GMG, Hot Metal, and the top two teams not named Scandal in DC.From there, they take the next 3 strongest teams and they each earn their region a strength bid.

The issue becomes with how do you determine strong. Since USA-U has no way of determining the strength of pickup teams, they assume that they are more likely to be bad than good (which is generally but obviously not always true), so they put them at the bottom. This is fair enough even though I personally don't like it. Of course, there's no objective way of saying "wait, that player used to be on this team 3 years ago... and and... they should get a strength bid!)" So you got a strength bid, as did two teams in DC. The reality in this case, is that "strength" bid is something of a misnomer, and it's closer to (but not entirely) a participation bid.

That is one legitimate beef with the USA-U, that their process of being eligible for a strength bid is too restrictive, even though it's relatively fair (two sanctioned tournaments). This isn't going away though, in their world everyone would be a usa-u member and every tournament would be sanctioned. (that last sentence is my opinion, based on more than conjecture but you could lobby them to reduce the requirements)

USA-U wants you to compete in the regular season. They want you to think that it matters. This is an area you can have a legitimate beef with USA-U but you won't get anywhere. Lots of teams have fought that particular fight and lost. I think the formalized regular season has some benefits, but some clear drawbacks as well. It's somewhat restrictive of roster movement, which has the benefit of making the regular season games potentially represent a teams true ability better (but there are still lots of factors that are bigger such as travel time, injuries etc), but also maybe insures fewer teams go to tournaments because getting pickup players that are solid to make up the numbers is more difficult.

The other area you can have a legitimate beef with USA-U is that the strength bids should be allocated first, not size bids. This is really a matter of taste, and the arguments are stronger the other way, but I will try to make your argument for you. It runs as follows:

There are 3 strengh bids for your region. Shouldn't they go to the 3 strongest teams? Let the strong teams get the strength bids, and then everyone else can battle to claim one of the size bids. In this system, GMG and HM claim a strength bid. That would give your section 4 bids. The counter argument of course, is that imagine a section with GMG, HM, and the worst teams you've ever seen.

Then imagine a section with a bunch of teams in between HM and the worst team you've ever seen. That region gets fewer strength bids, even though they are going to be much better at sending teams that will be worthy of a bottom finish at regionals spot. And that argument is fairer.

 Remember, the goal of USA-U's series is to crown a national champion. Their goal is to be objective and fair about finding the right number of teams to be at regionals, and as such, the system is how it is. By the numbers, and USA-U's regular season, they assumed that 3 of the 7 best teams at regionals would come from your section. They went with the data and process they had. They assume pickup teams will finish at the bottom, because they usually do, and because it goes with the narrative that to be good at ultimate you must put alot of time into each and every season.

In fairness, if the women from dbj and AG all quit their teams in august and made a super team, there would be at least one women's team in capital who had "earned" a strength bid also on the outside looking in. And it's pretty fair. On the list of horrible things the USA-U has done or is trying to do to club, it's towards the bottom, and it's only on the list at all because some of the system involves their dreaded regular season nonsense.

Missing regionals hurts. But this will be my one lecturing point. Your stated goal was to make regionals. Some people have lectured your team that it's better earned on the field than on a petition especially after you didn't win any games (and all of the games were fairly played). That's probably true, but I'd go differently. Having an outcome based goal is just simply a mistake. Most of the great teams these days have process based goals, even the ones i don't like. One college nationals power had a goal that had nothing to do with Nationals. Their goal was simply to be the most physically fit and best conditioned team in the country. They work hard on that goal, and as a byproduct of it have not only made nationals recently but won it.

Legendary women's coach Lou Burruss had a goal for his team of not getting caught up in petty call games and treating every team with respect and a full out assumption that every opponent's call was not meant to cheat. That was one of their key goals. He said it saved their team energy and gave them focus and let them play their own game. Oregon just won college women's nationals.

 Teams that have goals of "nationals or bust", almost invariably fold after they dont hit their performance goal (if not right away, usually not too long after). At the nationals level, who gets a bid is much more opaque and subject to rigging than the relatively transparent bid to regionals process. (not necessarily by design but certainly in practice).

I'd say one of the goals for your leadership next year needs to be to eliminate any performance based goals. Find a process goal or three and stick with it. Process goals should be stretch goals, but the performance will follow if you hit your process goal. For my own team our process goal is kind of a secret, and we haven't finished hitting it yet, but it's given us something to rally around this year.

 Outcomes based goals in our sport are going to lead to heartbreak. You can get hosed by so many things out of your control.