On-campus NCAA regionals

[marty]

(But I'm not sure this really helps Cornell win a national title, which is what I care about the most.)

The more games Cornell gets to play at Lynah, the better.  Obviously there's no guarantee Cornell will be in the top 8 or top 4 to guarantee postseason home games, but the risk seems worth it if Cornell can even get a postseason berth.

I'm wondering whether the regionals are generating NCAA money that would work against this type of a change. The "just as good as a Viagra" commercials notwithstanding there is also decent attendance at some of the locations.

[BearLover]

(But I'm not sure this really helps Cornell win a national title, which is what I care about the most.)

The more games Cornell gets to play at Lynah, the better.  Obviously there's no guarantee Cornell will be in the top 8 or top 4 to guarantee postseason home games, but the risk seems worth it if Cornell can even get a postseason berth.

I'm wondering whether the regionals are generating NCAA money that would work against this type of a change. The "just as good as a Viagra" commercials notwithstanding there is also decent attendance at some of the locations.

TV ratings would surely be higher for on-campus regionals though? The atmosphere is so bad, it's not a good tv product.

[scoop85]

(But I'm not sure this really helps Cornell win a national title, which is what I care about the most.)

The more games Cornell gets to play at Lynah, the better.  Obviously there's no guarantee Cornell will be in the top 8 or top 4 to guarantee postseason home games, but the risk seems worth it if Cornell can even get a postseason berth.

I'm wondering whether the regionals are generating NCAA money that would work against this type of a change. The "just as good as a Viagra" commercials notwithstanding there is also decent attendance at some of the locations.

TV ratings would surely be higher for on-campus regionals though? The atmosphere is so bad, it's not a good tv product.

While that's generally been true, our regional last year had lots of juice with all the MSU fans

[VIEWfromK]

Is the time between when the seedings come out and the regionals are played sufficient for TV crews

For NCAA football the networks sometimes don't get to pick their Saturday matchups until the Sunday before.  If you have crews hired ahead of time to cover those on campus regionals you just send them where they need to go once the seedings are set.  They usually only need one day to set up the TV truck so that leaves many days to get to any of the remote locations in the lower fifty states.  Not sure what would happen if Alaska were to host.

[chimpfood]

They also have to send 2x the number of crews that they do now if you do the 1-8 seeds getting home games. I'm still in favor of home regionals and I think that 1-8 home games makes more sense than doing the current system just hosted by the 1-4 seeds but there are certainly some hurdles that are out of the control of even the NCAA.

[adamw]

Overall, I prioritize fairness and excitement. On-campus regionals are more fair and more exciting.

on-campus Regionals may be a lot of things - but more fair is not one of them.

[adamw]

I think overall it will help us but I just hate the regionals as a relic of when we were bending over for Bristol thinking we were going to be the next hoops.

Fuck that and fuck them, return the sport to the campuses and the barns that make it great.  If it means we play in NoDak whatevs.

It will also tend to take the air out of the balloon for expansion, and we won't have to tolerate Alabama playing USC for the title someday.  That was always just a fever dream by the college hockey media to puff themselves up.  Fuck that and fuck them.

Keep it cold, exclusive, and intimate.  Anybody comes to you selling hype shoot first ask questions never.

It's pretty funny that you want to go back to campus as a way of stopping "progress" - while all the advocates inside the sport want to go back to campus sites in order to "grow the game." So - they believe it does the exact opposite of your wishes.  I, however, have made your arguments - as a reason to not do it.

[adamw]

TV ratings would surely be higher for on-campus regionals though? The atmosphere is so bad, it's not a good tv product.

I've yet to see any evidence that seeing the stands full on TV, would make more people watch the game.

There's an argument to be made that it would make TV ratings worse. Since all the people who want to see it but couldn't make it, would be at the arena now instead of watching on TV.

[marty]

TV ratings would surely be higher for on-campus regionals though? The atmosphere is so bad, it's not a good tv product.

I've yet to see any evidence that seeing the stands full on TV, would make more people watch the game.

There's an argument to be made that it would make TV ratings worse. Since all the people who want to see it but couldn't make it, would be at the arena now instead of watching on TV.

Adam,
Do you know whether the monetary impact of the Regionals is a net positive for the NCAA.  Do the well attended Regionals offset the clunkers? I'm thinking the NCAA would never release the number$.

[BearLover]

Overall, I prioritize fairness and excitement. On-campus regionals are more fair and more exciting.

on-campus Regionals may be a lot of things - but more fair is not one of them.

On-campus regionals seems quite a bit fairer to me than the current system. Under the current system, we have 4 seeds hosting 1 seeds, and we have teams being paired to maximize attendance rather than based on seeding. With on-campus regionals, hosting is based on an objective criterion (computer ranking), rather than which schools paid to host or where the committee wants to send you to make more money.

[BearLover]

TV ratings would surely be higher for on-campus regionals though? The atmosphere is so bad, it's not a good tv product.

I've yet to see any evidence that seeing the stands full on TV, would make more people watch the game.

We haven't conducted a controlled experiment for this, but I would note that during the pandemic (empty stadiums), TV ratings of sports were very bad, even though everyone was stuck at home without anything better to do.

There's an argument to be made that it would make TV ratings worse. Since all the people who want to see it but couldn't make it, would be at the arena now instead of watching on TV.

This is a tiny number of people (a few thousand).

[upprdeck]

This is actually wrong

Viewership was not down during covid, It was actually up.

The issue is that it was spread wider, so individual sports had lower numbers

Like we had 20 million people watching over 200 events.
we before we had 15 million over 100 events.

[Trotsky]

I think overall it will help us but I just hate the regionals as a relic of when we were bending over for Bristol thinking we were going to be the next hoops.

Fuck that and fuck them, return the sport to the campuses and the barns that make it great.  If it means we play in NoDak whatevs.

It will also tend to take the air out of the balloon for expansion, and we won't have to tolerate Alabama playing USC for the title someday.  That was always just a fever dream by the college hockey media to puff themselves up.  Fuck that and fuck them.

Keep it cold, exclusive, and intimate.  Anybody comes to you selling hype shoot first ask questions never.

It's pretty funny that you want to go back to campus as a way of stopping "progress" - while all the advocates inside the sport want to go back to campus sites in order to "grow the game." So - they believe it does the exact opposite of your wishes.  I, however, have made your arguments - as a reason to not do it.

Then we're in agreement!  

If there is one lesson of the last 50 years it's that size kills.  The more you grow things the more they distort and hollow out inside.  Bigger is worse.  

The ideal metaphor for growth is cancer.

[adamw]

Overall, I prioritize fairness and excitement. On-campus regionals are more fair and more exciting.

on-campus Regionals may be a lot of things - but more fair is not one of them.

On-campus regionals seems quite a bit fairer to me than the current system. Under the current system, we have 4 seeds hosting 1 seeds, and we have teams being paired to maximize attendance rather than based on seeding. With on-campus regionals, hosting is based on an objective criterion (computer ranking), rather than which schools paid to host or where the committee wants to send you to make more money.

An imperfect (far from perfect) "objective" criterion is not necessarily more fair - any more than something being legal automatically makes it legally right. As I've written about approximately 11 billion times, the whole reason many neutral site Regional proponents like it is because of the inequity with home ice Regionals. You take flawed math and you compound it by giving that team home ice.  Note: "flawed" does not mean bad.  It just means that you take meaningless differences, based upon arbitrary weightings, and give a team an enormous advantage.  It's wildly unfair.  I've heard all the arguments the other way a zillion times.

"Well, NHL teams do it" ... a) the NHL has fully objective standings with relatively balanced schedules against similar competition ... and b) the NHL gives best-of-7 series where 3 of the 7 games are played at the lower seed. In college, the proposal is that all 3 games be played at the higher seed. Big difference. ....

"Well, it's good enough for selecting the teams" ... another hollow argument that I've addressed a ridiculous amount of times. The difference between selection and seeding is clear ... with selection, the alternative (very flawed humans deciding) is far worse than any computer algorithm. However, with seeding, we have an alternative to granting home-ice - which is the current neutral site system.  This difference is glaringly obvious, yet I hear this trope repeated constantly as a way to "zing" me. Nope.

As for the inequities you describe -- I am on record as saying that those things should never happen either.  They are relatively rare.  I believe those issues can and should be solved. The solution is not to throw out the system and do something even more unfair to everyone.

Many arguments can be made in favor of on-campus Regionals. Fairness is not one of them.

[adamw]

TV ratings would surely be higher for on-campus regionals though? The atmosphere is so bad, it's not a good tv product.

I've yet to see any evidence that seeing the stands full on TV, would make more people watch the game.

We haven't conducted a controlled experiment for this, but I would note that during the pandemic (empty stadiums), TV ratings of sports were very bad, even though everyone was stuck at home without anything better to do.

There's an argument to be made that it would make TV ratings worse. Since all the people who want to see it but couldn't make it, would be at the arena now instead of watching on TV.

This is a tiny number of people (a few thousand).

how many people you think are actually clamoring to watch NCAA ice hockey Regionals?