Originally <a href='/showthread.php?p=21439322'>posted</a> on 03/20/2014:

It's greed. When the Mountain West/WAC split in 2000, there were 30 automatic bids and 34 at-large bids. Instead of reducing an at-large bid to make it 31 auto bids and 33 at-large bids to accomidate the automatic bid for the new Mountain West Conference, the major conferences said NO WAY!! and instead kept the number of at-large bids at 34 and added the play in game. Then in 2010, wanting even more of the multi billion dollar pie, the major conferences added 3 more at-large bids which meant 3 more play-in games. It's all based on money and greed. Either reduce the field to 64 or force the final 8 at-large teams to play in those play-in games, not teams that won their auto bid.