This is what I heard at Big 12 and was also posted on Okie State Forum
Secondly, I was told on Saturday that the NCAA has granted the conference a waiver for a four-team qualifier. One condition, however, is that the conference will have no automatic qualifiers for its 10 champions. Right now, if a qualifying tournament does NOT have a Gold or Silver status wrestler as champion, the conference champion still gets an automatic bid. Will not be true for Big 12.
HOWEVER, going into the tournament, the four schools will have earned X number of automatics by virtue of the number of Golds and Silvers it has produced. Just like it is now. But it's possible (though not likely) that one weight class might not have ANY gold or silver status wrestlers. Thus, the "no-guaranteed-qualifier" clause thrown in for that situation.
(This is from the Okie State forum)