Any statistician would frankly find it laughable to have a formula where beating a top 25 opponent would be X points, but beating a top 26 team would be 0 points. It's silly to create arbitrary and discrete buckets, and the introduction of these artificial barriers would lead to manipulation once teams figure out the formula. If you want to make it as unbiased as possible, then you simply use "computer rankings" (with margin of victory), or you use "conference champions". If you want to introduce a human element, which is understandable, then you can nudge the computer rankings by weighting human polls (hello old BCS). Yes, that introduces controversy. so an even more human solution is to create a "selection committee", which allows you to justify a pick by hiding behind a "group of people". Personally, I think the current system of automatic bids plus at-large selections is perfect, and it does not need any tweaking. Every team that got left out failed multiple times during the season and only have themselves to blame. ** Edited by jesuisvtguy at 12/27/2024, 12:56:22 AM