Sudawn,
You are correct, there would not be a way to determine who goes and who doesn't. I am sure that this has been thrown out there before, but one solution might be to scrap all the Sub-Districts, have four true District tournaments, take the best eight from each and wrestle two Sub-States (D1 vs D3, D2 vs D4, or whatever combination), then take the top eight from each Sub-State to wrestle the sixteen man bracket at State.