Mike Machnik writes:
{HUGE SNIP}
>
> I wonder what the argument would have been, if first and second place
> had been reversed in the WCHA last year - if Minnesota had beaten out
> CC for first by one point instead, and then CC still did not receive a
> bid.  Would there have been any argument at all, or any justification
> for an argument?  There have been second place teams that did not get
> in and there was not nearly as much wailing or gnashing of teeth.
> Again, it seems to make sense to most people that it's wrong for the
> regular season champion not to get a bid...until you look at the facts.
 
And, being a WCHA fan, I can say it, they won a conference having a down year by
the skin of their teeth (as in, two teams within two points of them).  If you
want to say you got shafted, you need more convincing numbers than that.
 
{quoting Charlie...}
>
> >So lets understand that when people say CC was screwed, they mean
> >that the selection procedures appear to have been flawed.  Moreover,
> >perhaps some feel the selection committee SHOULd HAVE done something
> >about that at the time.
>
> Well, the committee did make decisions like this in the past...and in
> the process, they got most of the coaches, fans, teams, and media
> angry at them.  So they decided to eliminate politics last season and
> go with the prescribed system - but they still get ripped for not
> "doing something"...
{SNIP}
> And this is the real value of the CC situation last season.  At least
> partly because of it, I believe, the committee was much more forthcoming
> in explaining the process and how they arrived at the seeds.  They had
> never done this before.  It was always very vague such that some of us
> here had spent literally years trying to decipher the cryptic comments
> they'd make during the conference calls and figure out just WHAT
> really counted.  Now we know.
 
I'll bring up the Northern Michigan situation in 1993 again.  They were in a
situation where everyone thought they had to win the WCHA playoff championship
to get in, but they lost to the Gophers and got in as the fourth WCHA team to
get a bid.  There was a lot of grumbling about the fact that (NMU coach) Comley
being on the committee had something to do with it.  Actually, they were 13th or
14th in the RPICH, within .01 of #12, so that the tie-breakers would apply, and
they won the tie-breakers.  (We determined this upon examination later.)   This
left Comley in a position where he had to be VERY by-the-book about using the
procedure in 1994, in the face of accusations that he'd lobbied for his team the
year before, so he couldn't be advocating bending the rules for CC.  I think of
this as a VERY clear example of the grumbling about politics in the past leading
to the establishment of a concrete procedure.  And now people are griping that
the committee SHOULD have excercised some "discretion" and not just followed the
rules they'd earlier been insisting should be implemented.
 
Moral of the story:  No matter what you do, somebody's always gonna whine.
 
-Pam Sweeney
 
P.S. (Good initials...)  My apologies to posters who got bounced-mail messages
from my account last week.  I didn't realize the molbio down-time was going to
mess things up that much (or last much longer than they announced ahead of
time).  In a related matter, please note that I'm temporarily using another
email address. :-)
 
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