Macdonald's comments are rediculous.  Both a Big Ten split and an Ivy split have been discussed hypothetically by lots of people over the last few years, mostly as musings for the off-season.  Nothing I remember reading in the last several years gives any credence to the idea that either one of those scenarios may come to pass, for the reasons Craig mentions and more.

Mac seems to be forgetting that the CHA soon becomes eligible for an auto-bid, which given the current twelve-team bracket would make for six auto-bids, exactly the number he says the NCAA recommends.  If Mac is advocating breaking up existing leagues, that's a pretty drastic measure and not so "easy" on anybody.  It changes the entire landscape of D-I hockey, and would serve only the minor purpose of adding extra auto-bids.

On the other hand, if you keep the Ivies as a subset of the ECAC and the Big Ten as a subset of the CCHA/WCHA, and give each of those an auto-bid, that really makes a mess of things.  Suppose the Ivy champ also wins the ECAC auto-bid -- then what??  Do you have a seperate Big Ten Tournament??

IMHO, Mac is shooting his mouth off in that article.  The comments are irresponsible.  With the current system, the teams that get into the bracket without winning a conference championship have earned the right to be there the hard way -- winning games all season long.  A team has to play all year like they deserve a shot at a championship to be there. Handing out extra auto-bids for their own sake doesn't solve anything.

The bottom line is that if he wants to make the NCAA Championship more accessible to those 60 institutions, make more room by expanding the tournament, which is hopefully on its way.

-Todd
http://members.aol.com/todnielson/creasemonkey.html