In Reply to: Why first four is now played by four 10 seeds? Used to be 11 seed posted by Michael.Walter.Cronin on March 17, 2024 at 16:45:20
It's just that all those bid stealers meant there were weaker automatic qualifiers, so the at-large teams were stronger.
If there weren't 5 bid stealers, there would have been a bunch of 11 seeds who didn't make the tournament. They would have been in Dayton.