The system isn't perfect. There are compromises to accomodate certain
"principles" (my word) and realities.

Why do all league champions automatically get a bid to the tournament?
Because they do. That is the "flip side" of the way the ratings are used
to select the tournament -- the ratings show that teams ranked far below
teams that did not make the tournament get in, by virtue of playing in a
league that is not at the same level as other leagues. Is that fair? yes
and no. it is fair, becuase temas don't have much control over which
league they are in. but it is unfair to better teams that got "bumped"
for them. 

Likewise, a team (like Wisconsin this year -- and yes, they are the team
I cheer for) that plays in a "better" league and loses to very good
teams has a chance to get in by virtue of the way the ratings attempt to
take that into account.

Is it perfect? no. Is it fair? yes. Is it perfectly fair? no.

I'd like to see a switch to Krach for the ratings portion of the
process. But the overall setup -- giving each league an auto-bid, and
filling the rest with objective, relatively reasonable and
straight-forward ratings, is better than it used to be. way better.

We could take *just* the league champions from each league. One could
make the case that they have all earned it, and no one else has, since
they lost when they needed to win. But we don't do that, we pick a
larger field. My criteria for judging the selection process has always
been "are all the credible candidates for champion in the tournament?"
I think the current systems does that (but one could argue that with 16
teams, it would be almost impossible to miss that. which is another
reason that a 16 team tournament is good).

    --david