Somehow, now that my son has completed his college career, I have lost my interest in the sport
Seriously, unless you are a division 1 independent (which there are only a handful of), the playoffs start with the conference tournament which provides a great majority of teams with at least a "chance."
The Army team qualified this year by winning the Patriot League tournament for example and could have won the Texas Regional imho. I guess the opportunity that someone could argue then is should conferences like the Patriot League get more than one team in the field of 64?
I don't have a good answer for that. The same arguments come up in basketball as well and especially with the so-called bubble teams. The best answer for any specific team not in a power conference is to win their conference tournament. Another way is to play a rough out-of-conference schedule and try and climb the rpi rankings. I realize for northern schools that is almost impossible to do for several reasons. I also think there are politics involved and that will never go away imho. Until then, for non-power conference teams, the only method is to win the conference title. It seems to me that those playoffs are just as significant as the ones in the field of 64.