Craig A. McGowan writes:
>Since the labels have been introduced, let's label the positions:
>protectionist and free trade.  The protectionists are preventing the free
>trade of interconference games by forcing their teams to play the vast
>majority of games intra-conference.  The free trade conference is playing
>many more games with other conferences, but many of the strong teams are in
>the protectionist conference.
 
	Have you followed the the CCHA and WCHA for more than one year?
	Part of the reason the western teams have so few non-league
	games is because the NCAA at the last moment changed the maximum
	from 38 to 34 games.  Three years ago the teams had 10 non-league
	games, last year 6 games, and this year 2 games.  (Games against
	the Alaska schools don't count against the 34 game limit, hence
	some schools have more non-league games.)  With more teams entering
	the CCHA and possibly the WCHA(good luck Anchorage) the schedules
	will be rearranged once again.  It is silly to call the west
	protectionist based on this year.
 
>Then the protectionists invent something called a "strength of schedule
>ranking" which is allegedly the correct way to bias the inter-conference
>standings...  Somehow, their teams are ranked much higher than teams in
>the other conference...
 
>Now who's being political?
 
	Talk about being political!  WHO invented strength of schedule?
	Don't you realize that the NCAA selection committee is made up
	of one member of each of the four conferences?  This committee
	has decided to go with a method for ranking teams based on record
	and opponent's records because the coaches wanted to get away
	from subjective opinion.  Somehow you twist things around to make
	it into a plot to "bias the inter-conference standings".  The
	west (or HE for that matter) don't need to bias anything since
	a simple examination of the inter-conference records shows the
	ECAC lag far behind.
 
 
Jon Greene writes:
>>Until strong justification for using any other technique is developed and
>>until each league is required to play a greater percentage of its games
>>outside the conference (4 non-league games / team in the CCHA....very
>>weak predictor), giving a minimum of two entries to each is not
>>illogical.
 
	I actually agree with this.  It is not illogical, it recognizes
	that there outside forces that make choosing the top 12 teams
	less than the primary goal.  I would justify taking two teams
	from each league by saying that geographical balance is also
	a goal.  This balance will help to maintain fan and media interest
	across the college hockey universe.  We compromise an ideal(we
	pick the top 12 teams regardless of affiliation) for a geo-political
	consensus.
 
>>             Remember, using the most definitive quality of performance
>>metric available (results within a league which plays a round-robin
>>schedule) would place only one team from each conference in the
>>playoffs.  All others could be shown to be "non-deserving" of playing
>>for even higher honors.
 
	This isn't quite true.  You ignore the non-conference games.
	Since conference games aren't given anymore weight than non-
	conference games by the NCAA, a second place team with a better overall
	record might logically be ranked higher(name your metric, I'll
	give you an example).
 
 
mark "damn right, I'm a socialist" grassl