First four rule for the Ncaa Tournament

If you're looking at the tourney from scratch, then obviously you're right it's unfair.

But knowing how it was prior to the "first round," bubble teams from major conferences get in with seeding like the 11, not at 15 or 16. You have to account for bad automatic qualifiers, then it makes a little more sense.

I think it's silly personally but I think their justification is teams like Ole Miss and BYU aren't the autobids for their conferences and the teams in "worse" seeding positions are mid-majors who wouldn't have gotten in without winning their conference tournament.

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I can understand teams playing for the 16th seed to get in but why are BYU/Miss and Boise/Dayton playing for the 11th seed. Shouldn't these teams be in before the 12th,13th,14th,15th,and 16th seeded teams?

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Those lower seeds are (for the most part) the auto-qualifiers from weaker conferences.

That said, I agree completely, and they should take two of the 15s and have them play in against the other two 16s and shuffle the rest down accordingly.

I think a play-in for an 11-seed is pretty stupid, and since two of the play-in games are already between 16-seed AQs then it's not like the play-in games are reserved for at-large selections.

Honestly though, they should just go back to 64 and get rid of the play-in crap.

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IMO, no team that won an automatic bid should have to play their way in.

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My only counter to that is that you're punishing teams for playing in better conferences just because they can't beat a Kentucky or a Gonzaga. Which seems kind of shitty.

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Good point. The 16 seeds deserve to play in a "real" tournament game. The last teams in are forced to eliminate each other to play.

With that being said, should we go back to 64 since the automatic qualifiers don't have to play-in?

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I would prefer going back to 64 (streamlines the brackets), but it does get hard to differentiate b/w teams from different conferences, so I can understand having the bubble teams settle things on the floor.

I think it is pretty despicable that they basically kick out two 16s before the real tourney starts. Those teams play all year for a shot at one of the big boys in March, then two get dumped out in games nobody watches.

This all started when the Mountain West split off from the WAC, and the NCAA refused to reduce the # of at large bids, for whatever reason. So, we had 65 teams, and they forced out a 16 via a play in game. Apparently, they found some measure of conscience when they later expanded beyond 65.

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My only counter to that is that you're punishing teams for playing in better conferences just because they can't beat a Kentucky or a Gonzaga. Which seems kind of shitty

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I think there are plenty of at large bids to go around, and those pretty much all go to major conferences. I don't think a team that finishes 6th in its conference has much room to complain if they don't get in.

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Then they should move all the automatic qualifiers up seeds and the teams that have to play in, the 16th seed to face the number 1 seeds since they weren't good enough to make the round of 64, IMO.

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Why? For example, Ole Miss almost beat UK. Hampton or Manhattan won't come that close (or close at all most likely). Ole Miss is obviously a better team than either of those teams. Thus, Ole Miss shouldn't be "playing for a 16 seed."

It's okay to have smaller/shittier schools at lower seeds if they deserve lower seeds (which most of the time, they will), but I do like the idea that automatic bids shouldn't have to be in play-in games.