Championship Belt -- complete list!

Some wonderful people with too much time on their hands have traced the championship belt all the way back to the 1948 NCAA Championship won by Michigan on 3/20/48.

[board.uscho.com]

FWIW Cornell last held the belt on 1/30/98 and last held an "alternate belt" on 1/26/01.

Anyone wanna complete the ELynah Champ Belt database?

[Q]CowbellGuy Wrote:

Anyone wanna complete the ELynah Champ Belt database?[/q]

Sure. Let me know what the table looks like and I'll reformat the data into a CSV.

It uses the ELynah database's id numbers for schools, and any schools that don't currently exist aren't in there yet. Also, when a school changes conferences, there's a new school record created. It's more involved that just reformatting.

So you need

(1) School Name
(2) Conference
(3) Date of winning
(4) Number of defences

where (1) and (2) are the joint primary key. I'll get started.

Not exactly. There's a table of schools. Each record has a school name and conference (there isn't a separate conference table). There's also a previous team field, so when UVM moves, there will be a new 'UVM HEA' record with the previous team field pointing to the 'UVM ECAC' record and the system can walk back through. Since you're doing the heavy lifting, I can provide you with the current contents of the school table and you could point out the missing ones. Or you can just have it written out and do as much work as you feel like and I'll deal with it as best I can. Thanks!

Oh yeah. The Champ Belt page isn't especially smart. Each record has a start and end date. I figured that would ease the burden a bit when loading the whole bloody list. If you're arranging them chronologically, I could easily take care of that bit myself though.

Here's the school file. The next-to-last column is Ivy, the last column is previous team, FYI.

Sorry, that I didn't keep track of how many defenses each titleholder had -- I didn't have that much time.

Also, it isn't clear how defenses should be counted. One of the rules state that it in the case of a multigame playoff, only the eventual winner gets the Belt. This is to preclude the possibilty that in a two-game, total-goal playoff, the team winning the second game doesn't advance keeping the Belt from being contested until the following year. This could happen if Team A wins the first game 5-1, and Team B the second game 4-3 -- a fairly common situation.

For those that follow it, Ohio State swept Alaska-Fairbanks over the weekend and took the belt. Ohio State's next games are Friday and Saturday at Clarkson. This may be the last chance for any eastern school to get the belt prior to the NCAA tournament as there are no eastern schools in Ohio State's holiday tournament (Colorado College, Minnesota State, Miami).

Clarkson now has the belt after beating Ohio State Saturday. If I scanned the records correctly this is the first time an ECAC team has held the belt since Clarkson had it for one day in December 2001. Anyway, they will probably cough it up in their next games at the Badger Showdown at the end of this month. They play Ferris State on 12/31. The other first round game is Wisconsin V. Yale.

Cornell appears to have done it 12 times including for 333 days in 1970-71. Since the 1960s, only RPI (1984-85, 363 days) held it longer.


DATE WON FROM LOST TO
3/16/1967 Harvard Brown
12/18/1967 Harvard N Dakota
3/14/1969 Mich Denver
1/2/1970 BU RPI
12/30/1971 BU Harvard
3/10/1972 UNH BU
1/6/1973 Harvard BC
3/9/1973 Clarkson Wisc
1/24/1981 N'eastern Princeton
2/28/1981 Harvard Prov
2/17/1990 Brown UVM
1/30/1998 Clarkson SLU

[Q]billhoward Wrote:

Cornell appears to have done it 12 times including for 333 days in 1970-71. Since the 1960s, only RPI (1984-85, 363 days) held it longer.


DATE WON FROM LOST TO
3/16/1967 Harvard Brown
12/18/1967 Harvard N Dakota
3/14/1969 Mich Denver
1/2/1970 BU RPI
12/30/1971 BU Harvard
3/10/1972 UNH BU
1/6/1973 Harvard BC
3/9/1973 Clarkson Wisc
1/24/1981 N'eastern Princeton
2/28/1981 Harvard Prov
2/17/1990 Brown UVM
1/30/1998 Clarkson SLU
[/q]

Actually, 14 times for a total of 1,103 days starting with a win over Princeton on 1/14/1911. This was figured starting with the first intercollegiate game between Johns Hopkins and Yale on 2/1/1896. Because that game was a tie, The Belt was first awarded to Yale when they beat Hopkins in a rematch on 2/14/1896. The entire history and a growing amount of other nonsense is posted in the thread on USCHO mentioned in the first message. Currently, an ECAC Belt is being worked on.

The longest continuous possession of The Belt was by Dartmouth for 1,464 days over WW II. Harvard has held The Belt the longest, 5,472 days.

[q]This was figured starting with the first intercollegiate game between Johns Hopkins and Yale on 2/1/1896...[/q]You guys are insane. I love it!

Harvard probably counts back to when John Harvard took the belt from Priscilla Alden.

This thread is so ridiculous it deserves even further elevation. (You caught me cheating by my only going back to the Harkness era in my count of Cornell belt-holding.) Wouldn't it be great to have an actual cup -- okay, belt -- carried by the team holding the figurative belt, and it's passed along at game's end. Maybe it's on display at the scorer's table so the loser doesn't have to go back to the locker room and take it out?

The cup/belt would have to be cheap enough that when some ornery team doesn't want to part with it -- say it disagrees with the rules passing it on in case of ties, or failing to advance to the NCAAs -- you just create a new one.

Somebody like a Nike or CCM or iTech could sponsor it, although it really should have the name of a coach or legend on it, not a commercial entity. USCHO could sponsor it. We could sponsor it and call it the Dryden Belt or Lynah Belt.

Maybe you embed a GPS transponder in the belt, rather having a full time white-gloved employee (like in the NHL) watching over it. Speaking of which, I wonder where the Stanley Cup is these days?

Someone also suggested on the USCHO thread that there should be an actual belt, and perhaps USCHO posters should pass it around. (If that is the case, there will be trouble if Princeton ever gets The Belt again because there are apparently no Princeton fans. )

The rules in case of ties were discussed in the USCHO thread. The current holder keeps The Belt. An Alternate Belt is awarded to the challenger if it wins the game in a shootout. This has happened three times, twice when the HEA was using shootouts to break ties and once a few years ago in a midseason tourney.

Alternate Belts are also awarded when The Belt doesn't make it to the NCAA Tourney. This has happened quite a few times although not recently. It took almost four years for an Alternate Belt won by BC in 1949 to be unified with The Belt.

Lastly, an Alternate Belt was awarded to BC in 1922 when they met Harvard, The Belt holder, in what was apparently considered an exhibition match and BC won. The schools were not on speaking terms at the time (I don't know why), and the teams called themselves the Boston Eagles and the Crimson Ramblers. The game is now in the schools' records. Sean Pickett is still looking into this.

The hard work is done by the people who researched old games where it was unclear if it was exhibition or regular season or even who actually won the game. That lets the rest of us argue nuance such as the meaning of the alternate belt.

My own take is that if the belt holder doesn't make the NCAA tourney, then the alternate belt should expire with the new NCAA champion.

Tie-goes-to-the-holder makes sense. Not counting shootouts makes sense if it's a midseason tournament and if the season points standing counts it as a tie for both teams. But if a shootout decides who advances in an end of season tournament, then, hmm, maybe that should count toward the belt. There aleady appears to be an exception for total goals or best-of-three tournaments so that the winner of the series gets the belt.

The point of the alternate belt ought to be to account for occasional weirdnesses such as a team not making the tournament, as opposed to having a half-dozen belts being carried around the country. For those of familiar with NYC, this smacks of the dozen or so unrelated establishments all calling themselves the original famous Ray's pizza.

If this were all computerized, including the various possible paths, then partisans for each school could determine which path most advantaged their team.

[Q]billhoward Wrote:
My own take is that if the belt holder doesn't make the NCAA tourney, then the alternate belt should expire with the new NCAA champion.

But if a shootout decides who advances in an end of season tournament, then, hmm, maybe that should count toward the belt. There aleady appears to be an exception for total goals or best-of-three tournaments so that the winner of the series gets the belt.

The point of the alternate belt ought to be to account for occasional weirdnesses such as a team not making the tournament, as opposed to having a half-dozen belts being carried around the country.[/q]

1st scenario - the team with the real belt keeps it to next season, even though they didn't make the tourny. The alternate belt goes to the champion of the NCAA tournament, although alternate belts are not recognized by the official rules committee of the championship belt. However, there is only one official belt and its lineage isn't up for debate unless you plan on joining the CBC (Championship Belt Committee).

2nd scenario - all conference and ncaa tournaments use multiple overtimes for post season play, which fall under the regular rules. Therefore there will never be a shootout to decide a post season winner. The rules were amended to allow for previous playoff methods, although they are greatly frowned upon.

3rd scenario - again, alternate belts are outside the purview of the official belt. People can make whatever rules they want for it, since there will only be one true Championship Belt.

[Q]Dart~Ben Wrote:
... 3rd scenario - again, alternate belts are outside the purview of the official belt. People can make whatever rules they want for it, since there will only be one true Championship Belt. [/q]

Kind of unusual describing an official belt, an alternate belt, and an unofficial belt for a Championship Belt that is wholly unsanctioned. OTOH, if fantasy baseball can have "official" rules ...

The most odd part of the rules, so to speak, would be one that allows a team not making the tournament to retain a regular, alternate, you name it, belt until it gets beaten sometime in the following year. The NCAA tournament should be an automatic reset in favor of the winner -- pass Go, collect $200, collect the bet, if you're lucky get a one-page story in Sports Illustrated.

In case this thread winds down: We also need to work up a scenario by which Yale is the best team in the country because it beat Princeton which beat ... ... which beat Minnesota.

[Q]billhoward Wrote:
The most odd part of the rules, so to speak, would be one that allows a team not making the tournament to retain a regular, alternate, you name it, belt until it gets beaten sometime in the following year. The NCAA tournament should be an automatic reset in favor of the winner -- pass Go, collect $200, collect the bet, if you're lucky get a one-page story in Sports Illustrated.
[/q]
Not at all. You're missing the point of this entire exercise, which is to give us hockey geeks a reason to pore over archives and relive (and even totally invent) past glories. Alternate belts simply increase the "fun."

[Q]billhoward Wrote:

In case this thread winds down: We also need to work up a scenario by which Yale is the best team in the country because it beat Princeton which beat ... ... which beat Minnesota. [/q]

I've got one. I'm not sure if it's the shortest chain though.

Yale beat Princeton who beat Dartmouth who beat St. Lawrence who beat Michigan State who beat Nebraska-Omaha who beat Merrimack who beat Wayne State who beat Bemidji State who beat Lake Superior who beat Northern Michigan who beat Michigan Tech who beat Alaska-Anchorage who beat Minnesota.

(Yes, I've got too much free time on my hands.)

Of course, Cornell beat Yale, which proves that Cornell is the best team in the country!

[Q]Will Wrote:

Yale beat Princeton who beat Dartmouth who beat St. Lawrence who beat Michigan State who beat Nebraska-Omaha who beat Merrimack who beat Wayne State who beat Bemidji State who beat Lake Superior who beat Northern Michigan who beat Michigan Tech who beat Alaska-Anchorage who beat Minnesota.[/q]

Woo, that's all over the map. Of course, the key is Duluth, who had its trouble with the EZACHL.

Yale beat Princeton who beat Brown who beat Minnesota-Duluth who beat North Dakota who beat Minnesota.

Now I just have to figure out how UMass-Lowell is 6-0-0 vs. ECACHL opponents, 0-5-2 vs. Hockey East opponents, and 8-5-2 overall.

[q]In case this thread winds down: We also need to work up a scenario by which Yale is the best team in the country because it beat Princeton which beat ... ... which beat Minnesota. [/q]

East Coast bias.