PatsFaninAZ
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Sorry, but the college basketball tournament shows you to be wrong. No matter what number you use for the cutoff, you will always have weeping and gnashing of teeth. It's just a normal by-product of an exclusionary system.
Completely different kettle of fish. It's a totally different type of gnashing, and a much lower level one.
No team that has ever been excluded from the NCAA tournament since the expansion to 64 teams has ever had a realistic chance of winning the tournament. Year after year after year, it does a great job of crowning an entirely legitimate and completely recognized champion. The gnashing about the bubble is more about money and participation. I guess there would be the same level of griping about the first team on the bubble left out of an 8-game playoff for football, but that's a whole oder of magnitude lower and different than a system that excludes a legitimate and fully worthy national championship contender from even competing. Plus, NCAA football would still have all the other bowls, so the non-playoff teams would still get to participate in the post-season, which what the teams on the bubble in college basketball really want: the honor to go to the tournament and maybe knock off a goliath or get a nice roadtrip and play on national tv.
The on-the-bubble teeth gnashing for the tournament usually lasts all of one or two days after selection Sunday. The BCS travesty is a perpetual topic of discussion and aggitation.