How would you attempt to rank the best 50 TB teams in the country?

[MTR]

What makes it impossible? Not disagreeing with you. But what do you see as the main obstacles? Lack of reliable scores? Not enough inter-play among the top teams? Transient rosters that make identifying teams difficult?

There is no common baseline upon which to determine the level of each team. Even if you played a 200 team tournament, you would still only be able to come up with a rough estimate of the best 50 teams of those 200. You may even be able to extrapolate another level if you can find enough common opponents, but you are still going to be shy of being totally inclusive.

You can always make a educated best estimate, but that is still all it is. You cannot even use which team has the better players as being a top player and a top team are different dynamics for which only an estimate will be available.

 

[Lickety Split]

Start with teams named "Elite Gold", followed by "Elite", followed by "Gold". Your "Extreme" teams should fall in behind the Gold teams. Then look at teams named after a weather system "Thunder, Lightning, Tornadoes, Hurricanes, Heat, etc. to fill out your top 50.

 

[nanotech14]

Our team sometimes goes with elite, platinum, with gold leave A, so that should get us in the top 5.

 

[YOCOACH]

What about the teams named after top quality gem stones such as Diamonds, Emeralds, Rubies, Onyx, etc. etc. Where would they fall? What about those same teams named differently such as Diamond Elite, Emeralds Platinum, Rubies Gold, or X team Onyx. Where would you place them?

 

[CatchTheFever]

Without reading the entire thread, my answer to the OP would be:
1) Talk to coaches in every state and ask each to rank thevtop teams in their state in order
2) Ask coaches to rank top teams per region as well
3) research records and results from the top 10 tournaments in each region
4) weigh the results of top tiered tournaments
5) utilize head to head records and/or results vs other recognized top teams

There's no perfect system and will always be some type of bias, but doing all of the above would be pretty close.

*I'll also say that the older the group of players, the tougher it would be to rank simply because teams start playing for different reasons based on the future goals of the team. Ie. Showcase tournaments, etc.