I'm not saying velocity not important, just for most part we have vary little control about it.
Plus look at the Cleveland and it 4 V head and 302/351 Boss these engines have to be one of the biggest examples of too much cross section for a given cfm for engines of small medium sizes generally not spinning the craziest of rpms.
Some will probably argue these engines especially the 302 are soft, but even if they are, these are some of the most extreme examples, the average small block Mopar can't even come close to over csa like the Cleveland. And there's got to be a ton of examples of strong running Cleveland based Fords out there. Not to say they wouldn't do better with an appropriate sized port. Point is a too big of port is probably better than to small for a given power. (within reason)
Most of us don't have the luxury to tailor match port cc, cas, cfm to each engine.
A stock X head can support 200-400+ hp engines, for a 200-300 hp engine a 273/318 head could easily do it too but gonna need way more cam over the X head which way is better ? On paper a stock 175 cfm 318 head should be able to make 400 + hp but is it the wises choice to do so?
On a single purpose race engine obviously the better you can match all this up the better the combo will be, a street engine that has multi-tasks to accomplish I feel velocity important but not at the compromise of everything else.