I think no matter how you look at things, scoring and awarding of bids will never be perfect for everyone and the reason is because we have human beings judging. Our sport is so unlike other sports where points are scored. In our case, points are awarded by judges who although are using a rubric with ranges, still have some ability to decide on a score, ie is a team at the high end of a range or at the low end of a range.
Speaking as a judge (high school, Pop Warner, and AYC----not all-star, but I believe the same things apply), I can tell you that sometimes at the beginning of a day, I start off a little too high or a little too low--not a lot--maybe .1 , but enough that if I adjust myself immediately, I am going to effect the outcome in that division. So for that group of teams, I stay either too high or too low to keep everything in line for that division. Some of you might ask, "But how can this happen if you are using a rubric? Aren't things supposed to be worth a certain amount?" Yes, to an extent, but you still have the discretion to decide what the score is in the end. For example, to be in the high range of stunts, you need 4 different level appropriate skills performed by most of team, 2 of which are Elite level appropriate. You can then score a 4.5-5.0. The judge then decides where in that range to put a team. So for me if I think I as a little too high or a little too low in one division, I reset a little bit in the next division. For this reason, I think it's somewhat important to review before awarding bids.
I agree that this industry needs to be SO much more transparent. Why are the scores always a secret? To me, it's so that the EPs can do whatever they want with bids. I could be completely wrong, but that's what it looks like.
As far as "rules" for awarding bids, I'm not sure I agree with some of the ways that bids are being awarded currently. My girls were on a J2 two years ago. We can in second over and over again. They got a paid bid at Athletic. They didn't win their division, but they had the 2nd highest score of the entire competition. Now, they probably wouldn't get a bid there. A month later, they came in 2nd again in their division at Spirit Fest. They were also 2nd overall of all teams in all divisions again. I don't think they would get a bid there anymore either. They went on to win the Summit, so they did belong there.
Last year, we saw teams awarded bids because they won their division and every other division winner in that level already had bids. It didn't necessarily mean that they had a higher score than many other teams that happened to have a lot of strong teams in their level; it was just that quite a few teams in that level already had bids.
With all this rambling, I'm not sure I have any sort of solution whatsoever. And I'm not sure if there's a solution that will work for everyone, but I'd love for the powers that be try to find one. My .02