Interesting: WCHA and CHA auto berths

[Cop at Lynah]

Interesting article on WCHA and CHA auto bids to the tournament.

http://insidecollegehockey.com/sectionsINCH/7Archives/Features/autobid_0118.htm

[adamw]

http://www.uscho.com/news/2003/02/06_006085.php

[ugarte]

It is as if all of the huge D1 programs that hemmorhage money want to spoil the fun of 1-big-sport schools likes Clarkson and SCSU.  Travesty.

[jtwcornell91]

Is there not a college hockey body with some discretion in determining who gets autobids?  I.e., hockey used to let in RS champions quasi-automatically with the Colorado College rule; can they not also give the WCHA and CHA champions such bids as well?  I.e., the NCAA hands them four "official" autobids for the ECAC, HE, MAAC, and CCHA, and they add two more unofficial autobids.  Some might argue against extending this courtesy to CHA, but IMHO if the MAAC "deserves" an auto-bid, so does the stronger CHA, not to mention that one of the points of going to sixteen teams was to let the MAAC and CHA champions in without squeezing out any deserving at-large contestants.  (I.e., #13 and #14 may complain, but three years ago they wouldn't have got it anyway.)

[Josh '99]

Shouldn't the link from the front page read "two of the SIX Division I conferences"?

[Keith K]

Typical example of hockey being very much a special case in the NC$$.  When you try to shoehorn the basketball rules on to hockey it just doesn't work.  The thought of the WCHA, the oldest conference in hockey,  losing its autobid on a meaningless technicality is ludicrous.  Though it would be funny to see the wailing in Minnesota. :-D

[DeltaOne81]

What's even funnier, is how many WCHA fans would be saying this is a great idea if it only affected the CHA.

[Greg Berge]

You hit the nail on the head, Delta.  You can bet the WCHA and HE fans would see nothing wrong with definitions of legitimacy that favor their conferences.

Although the ECAC isn't affected today, you can also bet that someday our D-1 status will be jeopardized by not playing the NCAA professional athlete game, and then the whole ECAC could be sunk.

[Tub(a)]

http://www.insidecollegehockey.com/sectionsINCH/7Archives/Features/autobid2_0118.htm

[adamw]

What's up with all this promotion of INCH? Where's the loyalty?

http://www.uscho.com/news/2003/02/06_006096.php

[Tub(a)]

haha, sorry, I noticed the INCH story first. Your article told us more anyways

[DeltaOne81]

To be fair, the INCH story was up first... takes time to write quality, not so much time to just write some content into a text editor.

[Scott Kominkiewicz \'84]

you can also bet that someday our D-1 status will be jeopardized by not playing the NCAA professional athlete game,

It already has in another sport.  Just go back to 1982 when all the Ivies were reclassified D-1AA in football.  That was a real smack in the face for a conference whose teams had the deepest roots in the sport.  (That still p*sses me off. :-(  )

As a side note, Yale had large enough attendance numbers to stay D-1A, but they chose to go with rest of the Ivies to preserve the league.

[bigred apple]

They wouldn't have kept up the attendance numbers if they ran weekly scrimmages or started losing by 50 every week to Big East teams.  Yale wasn't about to start trying to compete with Penn State, so I think they had to come with us.

[Scott Kominkiewicz \'84]

The point that I was trying to make was that the NCAA unceremoniously schtupped the Ivy League for not playing the "NCAA professional athlete game" as Greg noted.

As for Yale then, they were pretty damn good.  If I'm not mistaken, they were ranked in the top 20 at one point in the 1981 season.  I remember that they were undefeated late in that season when they came to Ithaca to play us on a snowy homecoming afternoon.  We were up by 10 or 20 points at halftime, but we unfortunately lost in the 4th quarter.  

As another testimony to Yale's status in the football world that year, Eli RB Rich Diana was a Heisman finalist.

Sorry for the digression, but I think Greg is right on in his analysis.  The top 25 in NCAA football and basketball are America's alternate major leagues.  I hope the same doesn't happen in hockey.