[M T]

<snip>
Yeah, we could make that up with, say, winning WBB and MBB, but why take away the points???

WBB and MBB, as two of the five mandatory sports, don't take away points. They can only add them. Of the non-mandatory sports, the 14 highest-scoring count with the remainder discarded.

"discarded" = "take away"   That's the question.  Why discard or take away points? 
BC refers to this as "some are more equal".
The reason seems to be that they don't want to reward doing well in a large number of sports (which naturally means a larger number of athletes).   
Anybody but Stanford.

Since you didn't seem to get my point, they've taken away the equivalent points of winning WBB and MBB.  Why complain that Stanford didn't get points in those sports (of course, we wish Stanford had) rather than complain that arbitrary rules take away so many points that Stanford did earn.

Once upon a time, I believe they claimed it was because some schools didn't have the budget to have many sports.   If they want to talk about budgets, then maybe they should exclude sports that require giant NIL budgets for a few athletes.

[M T]

<snip>
Yeah, we could make that up with, say, winning WBB and MBB, but why take away the points???

WBB and MBB, as two of the five mandatory sports, don't take away points. They can only add them. Of the non-mandatory sports, the 14 highest-scoring count with the remainder discarded.

"discarded" = "take away"   That's the question.  Why discard or take away points? 
BC refers to this as "some are more equal".
The reason seems to be that they don't want to reward doing well in a large number of sports (which naturally means a larger number of athletes).   
Anybody but Stanford.

Since you didn't seem to get my point, they've taken away the equivalent points of winning WBB and MBB.  Why complain that Stanford didn't get points in those sports (of course, we wish Stanford had) rather than complain that arbitrary rules take away so many points that Stanford did earn.

Once upon a time, I believe they claimed it was because some schools didn't have the budget to have many sports.   If they want to talk about budgets, then maybe they should exclude sports that require giant NIL budgets for a few athletes.