MLG Summer Arena: League of Legends Qualifier

An interesting item popped up on Facebook today from Major League Gaming. It would seem they're holding a League of Legends arena this season and are running open qualifying tournaments. It looks like they're advancing one NA team and one EU team from these qualifiers but I can't find any information about how else might be qualified for the arena already. Are any of the top notch teams excluded from the qualifiers? Just how good do you need to be to play in this thing?

The announcement was put up on the 5th and matches start on the 10th (tomorrow!) so there hasn't been a whole lot of time for teams to sign up. There's room for 32 teams and I'm really wondering how competitive the bottom chunk of this bracket is going to be. If Mathletes signed up would we get trounced or would we get thoroughly trounced? There's a $50 registration fee and prizes only for first place (free trip to New York to play in the arena) so signing up would be a lot like pissing $10 away... But getting to play at least two games in a serious (and possibly streamed) event actually sounds like better entertainment value than going to a movie, for example, and it's in the same price range.

Of course, jumping right in at the MLG level seems a little crazy. Do I really want to be the blackcat08 of LoL? I wonder if there are any more minor circuits kicking around to check out first. I remember playing in some scrub league for DotA many years ago with Robb and my brother. Those sorts of things have to exist now, right? Gamezilla back in New Brunswick is holding a LAN event in a couple weeks and I wonder if similarly things exist around here...

At any rate... Anyone else tempted to make a fool of themselves? Enh? Enh?