Sorry I didn't post this when it would have been useful, but instead of randomly giving some people a free pass out of the next round and random seeding, we should have had a group play round. With 24 or so, we break it into 8 groups of 3 teams. Thus, everyone plays 2 games in the group stage. The best 2 teams by wins or score differential as a tie-breaker from each group advances. This way, we would be able to properly seed based on record/score differential as well, and no one gets the advantage of having to win one less game like we have it now.
It would also have meant only 1 more game. 2 in the group stage, then down to 16 teams. That's 4 more games for the top 2 teams.