At this point, USTA has had plenty of time to make changes that could prevent this kind of team building from being successful. Examples:
...
Given the USTA's lack of action on all these items for several years, why wouldn't this captain feel welcome, even encouraged, to continue using his strategy?
This.
If all players arrive at their C ratings honestly, and self-rates follow the rules/guidelines, how can you fault any team for taking it to the Nth degree?
This captain, from my review, has not engaged in any obvious tanking of matches by his players to get bumped down or avoid bump ups, nor to avoid strikes during the year. He does try to play self-rates in positions (court 2 or 3) to mitigate their risk of strikes, or have players that may play singles later play doubles early in the year, but nothing in the regulations says this is against the rules. There is a mention in the rules about not playing at a level one knows is too low, but how is that to be determined by a player or captain? Sure it may be honorable for someone to say "4.0 is too low for me", but putting a player/captain in the position of having to do that is not a good solution as where does one draw the line? If player A opts to appeal up but player B who is equivalent doesn't, ...
I agree the rules can and should be tightened up. The USTA has WTN and I've suggested (and heard rumblings it may happen) it be used as part of self-rating and that would help, but it takes years for rules to change and it hasn't happened yet. I think the strike thresholds are too high and should be lowered, but that isn't' likely to happen. I agree the point penalty system needs to be administered and followed.
The only thing that can be done is A) the player to get strikes and be DQ'd, or B) for someone to file NTRP grievances (can be other captains OR USTA staff) against players and have them upheld. The challenge with the latter is while there is provision for the grievance committee to DQ/promote without there being strikes, I don't think it happens often and typically requires a self-rating violation to have occurred or something else specific. Simply saying "they are too good" isn't sufficient without something else. And in one case, I heard such a grievance was upheld, but then it was appealed and overturned (this one should have been overturned, the initial grievance committee overstepped, which is the challenge).
The challenge with strikes is as above, the thresholds are too high and there are legit ways to mitigate the risk of strikes. Add in that from what folks have posted here, sometimes the new players on these teams played in high-school but then haven't played for a year or two so may be rusty, and initial results may even be average for the level, but as the rust wears off, and the players improve from what appear to be legendary practice situations, they do improve and by late in the year are clearly above level, but the early results from rust and strike mitigation, and thresholds that are too high, allow the players to still be eligible come Nationals.
I have not looked at this latest team at all and can't speak to rules being followed or not or how much envelope pushing is going on here. What I wrote is based on past observations of this team and others that follow similar approaches that are legal per the regulations. This team/captain may just take it farther than most others, either in the number of players on the edge, or the degree to which they improve during the year, so they did stand out winning the consecutive Nationals.