A while ago :-), Chris Paine wrote:
>    On another note, someone had suggested that more Div. I teams playing
>at the II/III level be encouraged to move up, while simultaneously complaining
>that the NCAA Tournament, if anything, was too big and should be cut back to
>8 schools.  This seems to be quite a contradiction.  The smaller schools, if
>they form their own league, will have no incentive to be on the Div. I level
>without the chance to be in the postseason.  But would the larger schools
>want a fifth automatic bid to a 12-team (or worse, an 8-team) event?  I
>doubt it.
 
However, if a fifth league was made up entirely of DivI teams, no
matter what the caliber, then I believe the NC$$ would give them an
automatic bid which they could choose to have given to the reg season
champ or the conference tourney champ.  The other DivI teams have no say
since the NC$$ runs the tourney.  So if someone could put together a 5th
league of all DivI teams, I would say that automatic bid would give
them the incentive to play at the DivI level.  They would be
guaranteed that one of their teams would make the DivI tourney every
season.  I would guess that the requirement to play 20 DivI games
would also need to be met, but that shouldn't be as much of a problem
as forming the conference in the first place. :-)
---                                                                 ---
Mike Machnik                                          [log in to unmask]
Cabletron Systems, Inc.                                  *HMM* 11/13/93