As has been mentioned in the past, I think the conference needs to implement an RPI improvement plan. Each year, schools should be required to replace their bottom 5 RPI (3-4 year rolling average) with games against teams with higher RPI (50 or 100 higher).
I think there should be a penalty for not implementing- withholding a certain portion of basketball distribution.
Had we won the auto-bid we'd been lucky to get a #14 seed. Marshall too. In either case MTSU would have been relegated to the NIT.