@CityInWashingtonState - I can’t be doing with the moaning aimed at you for wanting to discuss an alternative tournament format. Send me a pm with a link to the US college system you referred to please mate.
I don't have a link.
But it goes as follows:
There are 4 regions: North, South, East, West (let's call them A, B, C, D for simplicity).
Seeding goes as follows: a panel of college basketball experts comprised (I believe) of top journalists, former coaches and other recognized experts meet. They go over the entire season, comparing the qualifications of each team taking into consideration strength of schedule, total wins, bad losses, good wins, recent performances, players now coming back from injury, etc. They force rank each side from 1-64 (well, there are play-in spots too but we can ignore these for now). They then place the teams into the 4 brackets: 1 to A, 2 to B, 3 to C, 4 to D (in college basketball home side advantage is important so if a bracket is near your home court you'll be favored to be placed there - we can ignore this too). These 4 teams become the 1-seeds in their respective brackets.
Next, 5-8 are placed into brackets: roughly 5 to D, 6 to C, 7 to B and 8 to A (but home court is again favored for these sides - we can ignore this for the WC).
7-12 are similarly divided and so forth for all sides.
===
At the start of the tournament, teams within each bracket face each other and this ensues until only 1 team remains from each bracket.
Initially, the 1 seed faces the 16 seed, the 2 seed faces the 15, 3 faces 14 and so on.
In the 2nd round, the survivor of 1 v 16 faces the expected next weakest survivor, i.e., 9 v. 8; 2 v 15 faces 10 v 7; etc.
And so on.
Mathematically, the sum of the expected surviving sides starts as 17 (e.g., 1 v. 16), then 9 (e.g., 1 v. 8), then 5 (e.g., 1 v. 4), then 3 (i.e., 1 v. 2).
Strong sides are afforded protection, facing the weakest expected surviving opposition at each stage.
Once the brackets are done, the winner of A plays the winner of some of some other bracket, say B, and C plays D. In the final, the winner of A v. B plays C v. D.
===
This sort of tournament arrangement strives to protect stronger sides against chance - pairing them against supposed weaker sides at each stage. And it's a knockout (one loss and you're out), all the way through.
===
Adopting such a system is a radical departure from the extant WC format and protecting strong sides to the extent done in USA college basketball would likely not be seen as desirable among the FIFA members. However, less drastic changes are possible that could improve the tournament if you'd like to see strong sides face each other as late as possible.
===
As a possible improvement to the current WC format maybe the following rule could be introduced:
The winner of a group stage picks which side of the bracket they'll play in.
Although not perfect, such a rule is compatible with a group knockout stage, and would avoid any advantage accrued from losing your final match. The chief drawback to this suggestion would seem to be that choosing becomes more and more advantageous the later your group stage finishes; little advantage - other than choice of venue, which upon reflection might actually be important - for the winners of the group that finishes first.
===
Anyhow, I think that it's more exciting to see strong sides play each other as late as possible in the tournament (they'll need to advance to these late stages of course). The extant WC format isn't at all optimal in this sense and could easily be improved by changes both big and small and, if desired, the group stage could be preserved.
