Before becoming a FlyerTalker, I would have complete sympathy with the "hold the plane" crowd. Now, I at least see the other side. Except for last flight of the day. Unless the crew was running the risk of clocking out, there would be no domino effect...the plane and all the passengers were spending the night in denver.

On a separate note, was on a delayed flight last week. luckily my connection (also the last flight of the day) was also delayed. Despite having to go from C26 to F14 -- after the shuttle bus stopped running -- made it with plenty of time. Went up to the agent to make sure they hadn't proactively bumped me because of the likely misconnect. The agent said "no one would ever pull you off because of that but let me check" and then said "huh, good thing you checked with me. you were pulled off, here's a BP with your new seat."

If this is a new procedure, then we're going to start seeing the OPs situation more and more where they run the standby list at t-20 or even t-30 and your seat had already been given away by the computer that decided you wouldn't make your connection.