I'm definitely in favor of "autopilot" schedules
which tell everyone exactly what they are doing for the
first phase of the tournament, explain how the seeding
procedures work for further portions, then express every
possible contingency in terms of seeds. This makes
everything objective and removes the possibility of bias or
unintentional slighting by tournament staff due to on-the-spot
decisions made to save time or avoid an intraschool
matchup. Especially in tournaments where the number of
guaranteed games does not include the playoffs (i.e.,
tournaments where one's playing in the later portions is
dependent on performing well in the preliminaries), any
playoff games are "extra" to the playing time guaranteed
by the tournament, so every school should have
gotten a sufficient number of games against new and
interesting teams beforehand.
--M.W.