Did you mean to quote someone in particular? Seems out of left field without a reference to the poster whom you're refuting I'd love to hear you defend this argument with respect to Trinidad and Tobago; based on their form over the last two years, I have serious doubts that they would've been able to qualify for League A if they had gone through the same 2018 qualifiers as the others.
I said I think it should be the old process or maybe even every team goes all the way back to the first round. So I wouldn't have started with the hex teams advanced further than anyone else. TnT would receive no special treatment but nor would Mexico either. Or at least no further than the semis if we went back to the old way. In terms of the league itself, you could make everyone qualify, that would be fair. Another short cut would be the top 4 "qualifiers/playoff teams" from Hex skip. But we would have missed that. You then could pick the hex like they did. That's the historical regional gold standard. You're dissing TnT but I don't know how you parse out 5th place America from 6th place TnT then. We're going to take most of the hex "except?" How is that rationally justifiable? It's either no one, the qualified, or everyone. And bringing in after-the-fact is skewed. The back end of the hex is always shifting. I don't know how you discern before the fact which hex teams have become hollowed out and which ones having staying power. That gets sorted after the fact but in setting up the tournament you can't assume how it plays out without the benefit of hindsight. Only after GC and LoN do we confirm TnT is trash this cycle. But that cannot be assumed til it happens. I also think some people are overstating the 2nd vs 3rd margins in some cases. Not every group has a Cuba, a sole straggler. Groups B and C of League A the margins are thin between Panama and Bermuda (3 points each, -4 and -5 GD) and Martinique and TnT (3 pts then 2 pts). So am I really acting like that distinction says everything about WCQ? To underline my point earlier about League A losers vs League B winners, Cuba beat Grenada 2-0 (at Grenada no less) in qualifying as part of their run to League A. Ditto League A Bermuda 1, El Salvador League B 0. There is a reason one team is above the other in league status right now. But the winners of those games are last in their League A groups, and the losers are first in their League B groups. The implication is the promotion teams are superior due to winning, versus the relegation teams. That is not what H2H shows. You can say, "I reward winning," but the teams actually each won but in different rounds. Or you can arbitrarily say the NL trumps, but as discussed it ignores why they were in one league or the other in the first place. To me this argument that we should favor the to-be-promoted League B winners over the perceived League A losers, ignores that in many cases the distinction rests on a League A qualifier sending them down during qualifying. We can pretend that pro/rel inherntly grasps all and sorts perfectly but I think it would probably be a mixed promotion bag of some teams that were separated on tiebreakers, and in fact equivalent, and others where they took a qualifying loss and were in fact proven "less than." As such the fairest approach, other than not going down this silly road in the first place, is the 3rd place League A teams make the playoff with the League B group winners and it gets sorted on the field. Because at least half of the League B group winners are there because the worst of League A already sent them there. Last, there is a "Martinique" problem in using LoN for WCQ. Teams participating in the LoN do not all play WCQ or participate in FIFA. So does that make TnT the second place world cup entrant in its group?
If fifth and sixth in the Hexagonal played Nations League Qualifying instead of starting in League A, we would have qualified for League A. There would have been 36 teams with 8 spots available. If each League A group had one team from the top four in the Hexagonal and two teams from Nations League Qualifying including fifth and sixth in the Hexagonal, we would have been grouped with Mexico, Costa Rica, Panama, or Honduras; and we might not have won our group; but we would still be in the top 6 in the FIFA Rankings at this point.
"we would have missed that," is not saying we would have blown league a quali. it's saying that if they only automatically took the first 3-4 hex teams for league a, that either qualified for 2018 or did the intercontinental playoff, we would factually miss that cut, just like tnt. to me we were joined at the hip with tnt as teams that blew it. it would look very strange if we got treated like a world cup team -- when we weren't -- and then tnt gets treated like a team that missed russia -- when we were no different on paper. the OP was trying to say how the heck is tnt automatically in. it's a subjective crybaby argument. teams will expect an objective process. your choices, if you are trying to look even handed are as follows: the whole hex advances. the qualifying three advance. the qualifying three plus honduras as playoff team advance. no one advances and everyone qualifies. i realize we are pretty good. i realize we are used to special treatment all over the place, no gold cup quali, straight to the semis in the world cup most years. this current rankings rubbish. but if you throw away "we know we're good," and use objective criteria, specifically, use the last hex as the tool to establish who gets automatically in, there are only so many rational choices, as discussed above. the idea that the US should auto-in but tnt doesn't, is silly. independent of subjective ideas of team quality, which shouldn't be used to sort how we pick who qualifies for a tournament, we either both should have been in -- as hex teams, as was done -- or both out -- as hex failures. joined at the hip. if all that matters was that hex then it shouldn't matter if we are the usually dominant power, better at the moment, etc. the former is not the criteria. the latter is being seen after the fact. it then goes without saying that if forced to qualify minus most hex teams we would have been in the quali pool and been a favorite to top the standings much less top 8. yes, into league a. duh. [but also probably in a tougher group from a weaker pot. maybe with mexico CR or honduras, with one team advancing. think canada on steroids.] do you really think the region would be ok with a process where 3-4 teams earn league a from hex, we get some weird special treatment despite how the hex went, and only tnt from the hex has to qualify from scratch? does that sound like a fair process? heck no. they may have wanted to throw us a bone. bad hex, dominant team, big tv market. so to get us in, i assume we pushed for automatically being in league a -- which means tnt joins us as also hex. like it or not. whether tnt was bad and got worse or not. if for the purpose of dividing the leagues we decided that just being in the hex was good enough for usa, tnt also gets that trump card. in for a penny in for a pound. fwiw, recalling that tnt beat us in the last game and we split points in the final round, what is your objective distinction based on the hex? that we recovered in the 2019 GC? LoN qualifying is well underway by that point. all you know when LoN quali gets rolling is two teams missed out last time and split their games.