J. Michael Neal writes
 
> There is a much
>smaller set of teams in football that have finished ranked among the top four teams
>than there are different teams that have made it to the basketball Final Four.
>This has more to do with the mechanics of building a football team vs building a
>basketball team than it does with the number of divisions,
 
        Not to mention the difference between being voted in the top
four in a subjective poll based on your regular season performance and
advancing in a postseason tournament.  It's got to be easier to
qualify for the field of 64 and string together four upsets than to go
11-0 (which is what a MAC team would have to do to make the top four
in a football poll).
 
        ObHockey: I would add something here, but I forgot what we
were talking about.  Are we worried that the flood of new schools to
D1 will lead to a family of weak sisters, or that the Big Ten will
form, gobble up money, and gut the Western conferences?  As for the
former, others have already pointed out that there are plenty of other
ways to define success than a national championship.  And the latter
strikes me as something that won't happen in the near future, hockey
rivalries being so different from football or basketball ones.  Don't
worry, something else terrible will happen to our lovely little sport
before we have to worry about that. :-)
                                         John Whelan, Cornell '91
                                               <[log in to unmask]>
                      <http://www.cc.utah.edu/~jtw16960/joe.html>
 
Attention ECAC:   Eight is Enough--Flush the Final Five!
 
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