Todd Neilson asks:
 
>OK, forgive me if this is a dumb question, but what the heck is the so-called
>Clarkson Rule?   I keep seeing it pop up, but I can't seem to find a clear
>explanation of what it is. (And please be kind -- I'm a Clarkson alumni!)
 
        The "Clarkson Rule" says that any team which wins both the
regular season and tournament championships in its conference gets a
first-round bye (one or two seed) in its regional.  It is so named
because when it was first proposed in 1995, Clarkson was the team in a
position to benefit from it.  But it was not implemented that season
(and the Knights lost to Princeton in the ECAC semifinals anyway), and
Boston University and Maine claimed the two Eastern byes on the basis
of their Ratings Percentage Index (this was the last year RPI was used
as the principal tournament-seeding mechanism).  Ironically, the only
time this rule has made a difference was in 1997, when BU was awarded
the bye which would have otherwise gone to Vermont (not New Hampshire,
as we thought at the time) on the basis of the pairwise comparisons.
And the other Eastern bye that year went to the #1E seed ... Clarkson.
 
        (We should probably add this to the FAQ.)
 
                                         John Whelan, Cornell '91
                                               <[log in to unmask]>
                      <http://www.cc.utah.edu/~jtw16960/joe.html>
 
        Learn about the NCAA selection process on the web at
       http://www.slack.net/~whelan/cgi-bin/tbrw.cgi?pairwise
 
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