In working with FS dumps, I've discovered that the Wii stores tickets for each save on the system.
It appears it would be fairly easy to edit the Title ID for the save and load it onto the Wii via a dummy WAD.
I don't know how much this would accomplish for anyone who doesn't have the Homebrew Channel already, but it's a good experiment.
Edit: Downgrading also might be possible via TFTP; I just have to get access to the raw firmware files.
It appears it would be fairly easy to edit the Title ID for the save and load it onto the Wii via a dummy WAD.
I don't know how much this would accomplish for anyone who doesn't have the Homebrew Channel already, but it's a good experiment.
Edit: Downgrading also might be possible via TFTP; I just have to get access to the raw firmware files.