Clearly people who are not the champion can be happy with their races, not everybody at the ncaa championships has a real shot to win, but can still race well. I dont disagree with that, but it is the job of the NCAA committee to have a system that picks the champion, not give little small school a chance to sneak an athlete in.
For example, this year the important thing was that Rupp, Derrick, Mcneil, bethke were all in the 5k. Above all else the system ensure the top performers get to square off against each other. The people who didnt make it out of the final can easily be interchanged with other people that didnt make the final. For them im sure making ncaa's was cool, but no big deal either way if they dont make.
As far as davidson goes, sure its exciting when a team like that catches fire, but that excitement, and their victories by no means shows they are a better team, rather they got lucky for a couple of games. There is an entire regular season that shows us who the top 8 or 10 teams are, it is unfair to those teams to let 65 teams play for the championship. The regular season should matter.
The same thing applies in track, if u cant run one of the 20 or so times of the year, how can you really say you will make an impact at the NCAA meet. And dont say the small schools in the east are at a huge disadvantage, I competed for four years at a small school in the east, and while most of those teams dont have people that merrit a trip to the ncaa's there are opportunities to find a fast face within a reasonable distance.