The NCAA Division I Championships and Competition Cabinet adopted
this rule mid-September for all Fall team championships.  During its
mid-February meeting, it extended the rule to all team sports with
the specific exceptions of Men's and Women's Basketball.  If you
follow Field Hockey, Soccer or Women's Volleyball, the results of the
Hockey committee's deliberations should not be surprising.

The decision was portrayed as an air travel reduction plan in the
wake of September 11, but there are some other interesting factors at
play here.  The Big Ten has been pushing *very* hard for the
regionalization of the baseball tournament, and I believe some
eastern conferences are doing the same in softball.  The
regionalization initiatives passed with surprisingly little
opposition, but they are in effect only for this year.  If they are
extended, there might be a bigger fight from the southern and western
conferences, since baseball and softball will be the major battle
grounds here for the Cabinet.

The actual bracket selected by the NCAA Hockey Committee is about the
only permitted result given the combined guidelines set up by that
committee and the NCAA Division I Championships & Competition Cabinet.


"Hampton, Nathan E." <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>No it wasn't. Why is UC Santa Barbara playing in Texas (WBB)? Why is >Georgia playing in Illinois (MBB)? The NCAA is not minimizing travel >for #1, #2, or any lower ranked teams in basketball, so why is this >rule only (supposedly) applied to hockey? You have a chair of the >ice hockey committee who decided to avoid further embarrassment for >his team by creating and placing his team in a decidedly weak >region. Not unexpected behavior from the Normal to Cheat and Abuse >with Arrogance.