In the Elo system, losing against a lower ranked opponent is most certainly not free. But when you are Harvard and you win ~80% of cross-admit battles, losing o

In the Elo system, losing against a lower ranked opponent is most certainly not free. But when you are Harvard and you win ~80% of cross-admit battles, losing only to Stanford, Princeton, Yale, and MIT (other high-Elo-point schools) then battles against lower ranked schools end up being free points. Contrast this with MIT, which, as pointed out above, does lose against lower ranked schools from time to time, bringing down it's ranking despite beating higher ranked schools frequently. In other words, the features that you suggest are critical, and the system already has those features.