re: Remember those few years when the NCAA called the “first four” the 1st round?

I like the play in games, and I bet the teams like them too.

Belmont won an NCAA tournament game last night. They likely never would've had that opportunity under the regular format.

The reason they have the play in games is because of additional conferences being added, like when the Big East and the AAC split. They didn't want to decrease the amount of at-large bids, but they had to add automatic bids. This was the solution.