The USS website seems to infer that they're already doing what I suggested (the crowdsourcing thing) albeit in a slightly 1990's way:

A second tool is a Graphic Display of Imputed Handicaps as an Analysis Tool that allows sailors and handicappers to develop a picture of whether a given boat is sailing well above its handicap, within expectations, or well below its handicap. By plugging fleet data into a spreadsheet for a series of races, handicappers can develop a picture of how a given boat is performing by calculating an imputed handicap and tracking that in a graph format. - See more at: http://www.ussailing.org/racing/offshore-big-boats/phrf/#sthash.z3T6v253.dpuf