I like the map itself more than any other non-DLC, non-community Reach map. I personally think it's ruined by the vehicles in Big Team.
I cut my Halo teeth on Halo:CE's PC multiplayer, and have at least 7 or 8 years of experience playing that. In CE, Blood Gulch is all about map control. There's so many competing angles of fire that not being completely aware of your surroundings at all times means you're going to rack up deaths like it's nothing. Most of the fighting centers around The Hill, and that's the most valuable piece of real estate your team can own. It's difficult to take, difficult to set up on, and difficult to hold successfully. Every other location is a stepping stone to clearing the hill.
Even in Reach this holds true in some cases, like Invasion Slayer or snipes on Hemorrhage. In any playlist where your own two feet are going to be your primary mode of transportation, I'd say that Hemorrhage is still a beautiful example of a map with tons of map control angles that can be played many different ways.
But I find that in big team, every stratagem of map control kind of goes in the crapper and turns into spawn camping because there's such a huge amount of heavy vehicles on the map. Who needs to hold the hill when we have two wraiths? Who needs to think of an original angle to use to break a setup when there's 3 revs in play? I realize Big Team is all about mass chaos, but for me all the vehicles kill what this map was about.
It's all personal opinion, of course, and I might be a bit jaded on the subject of this map since Halo:CE is the Halo installment that I play most frequently (and it just doesn't get better than Blood Gulch).
On a side note, whether or not people like the map I don't think that any one map should be preferred by the matchmaking system more than others. Variety's the spice of life, and all that junk.