Quote Originally Posted by Professor Chaos View Post
This is the Division 1 Football Championship - that means that any D1 conference (that wants it) should get access to it. If you want to argue that the non-scholly Pioneer or partial scholly NEC shouldn't be D1 conferences I'd say that's a valid argument but if you want to determine a champion of the (sub)division you should give all willing teams in that subdivision access to the championship tournament so they can gain or lose that access on the field not in a committee boardroom. That's why automatic bids are needed.

The only teams that would benefit from a 16 team format over a 24 team format are teams #9-#16 and their chances at winning the whole thing are about as good as teams #17-#24 anyway.
Umm. Yes. Not sure why we need to revisit this over, and over, and over again. I get the argument, but we could also say, if a team couldn't even win their conference, they already proved they don't deserve a spot. They aren't the best. Win your damn conference or stay home. Now, I realize that is a bit overboard, but no more than saying a conf champ doesn't deserve a spot. We have too many teams as it is. I'd always vote to limit it to 16. No Thanksgiving weekend games, seed all teams, even though I don't like the entire concept of seeding. Not to mention the subjective aspect of it. And screw all travel considerations.