It's NCAA tournament time in sports, and all of March will be dominated by it. Including this blog. And for good reason. March Madness approaches the Super Bowl and World Cup in casual appeal, throwing a bracket up is easier than ever, and bracket pools are always fun. The thrill of watching a cinderella story is almost unparalleled in sports, we get to see David slay Goliath multiple times in these two weeks. And that concept brings us to this week's topic. One debate that always shows up around this time is the presence of automatic conference tournament winner bids taking away At-Large spots (spots that are picked by the committee of their best teams). Some people view these spots as undeserving, can anyone really say that the Bradley Braves are better than Indiana, a team that swept the 2 seed Michigan State this year? Yet Bradley is in, Indiana is not. And if the tournament's goal is to find the best 64 (68) teams, then shouldn't it be just that, instead of having ranked 100+ teams make it in on the virtue of winning a tournament against a bunch of other 100+ ranked teams? The answer to that question is no, and it's not just for fun. And make no mistake it is more fun. I'd rather see Murray State led by Ja Morant in the tournament over a 10th Big Ten team any day of the week. Watching mid-major's shock the world is infinitely more exciting than watching the bottom of a Power 5 school flounder about. Stephen Curry's Davidson run is probably one of the most famous sweet 16 runs ever. Loyola Chicago's improbable journey to the final four last year was beautiful, and who can forget the high flying Florida Gulf Coast team's adventure in 2013? But these automatic bids are not just fun, they are equally deserving. Ranking systems in sports always tend to get hazy the further down you go. We rank top 25 not just because it's a nice round number, but also because the further down you go the less rankings mean anything. The gap between 1 and 25 is much larger than 50-100, it's simply the nature of sports. Even the 25-35 games each team plays is really not enough to have any surety in strength, especially when there are so many compounding factors, even more so since most of these schools you are picking from have not played each other nor any common opponents. To give a more exact example, having watched number 55 NET ranked OSU flounder for the last half of the season (their best win being against Cincinnati, literally their first game), I can't say for sure they are better then the rank 103 St. Louis Billikens. But what the Billikens do have is a tournament win. No matter who the competition is, winning a tournament is a big accomplishment, it shows a level of consistency, clutch and ability to win games that matter that a lot of the bottom of the power five simply don't have. And since the conference tournament is the last games they play before the Dance, it shows the team is peaking at the right time, they are playing well Right Now. In this momentum based sport, that matters. A team peaking now is better than a team who's best win was in November. If a team takes care of their business, they don't deserve to be discounted for their conference being weak as often times that isn't something they can feasibly help. NCAA football is different, only 4 teams make that tournament, so simply taking care of business isn't enough. But when the field is 68, can anyone really say that that a tournament winning mid-major is less deserving than number 54 Indiana? Does any rank 50+ team really deserve anything? Automatic bids for the conference winner is a good idea. It is not only more fun and interesting to see these smaller schools play, it is easy to argue that winning their conference tournament is just as big a feat as anything these mid 50 and 60 ranked big conference teams have done, and they did it at the exact right time. And when ranking becomes as imprecise as it does when we get far down the ranks, that matters.