Agreed, I think its also a disservice to all the tier 2 players and teams that no one is being promoted. Makes everyone's hard work over the past year completely meaningless...

As unfortunate as this is, I don't think the solution would be to just pass it over to M80 (as good as they are). It would be an injustice to the Guard players since they fought very hard to earn that spot, but are unable to participate in VCT because of what I think are logistical/administrative challenges from the org's end. I think Riot should allow the players/coaches to ascend and play in VCT under their own name and have them terminate themselves and their contracts from The Guard due to their inability to meet the deadline (similar to how M3C was able to compete as their own name rather than under Gambit).

TL;DR punish the org, not the players/coaches