It's really been a good year for College Hockey's two
mini-(non?)conferences.  Here's a summary of what the five Big Ten and
six Ivy League programs have done this year (numbers in parentheses
are the total number of teams in the appropriate conference(s) to have
reached the same accomplishments):
 
                      Big Ten        Ivy
Regular Season Titles: 1(2)         1(1)
Postseason Berths:     5(18)        5(10)
First-round Record vs other teams:
  games:               9-3          6-1-2
  series:              4-1          3-0
Conf Tourney Berths:   4(9)         4(5)
Conf Tourney Titles:   2(2)         1(1)
NCAA Berths:           4(6)         2(3)
 
        Both of last night's NCAA tournament games pitted Big Ten
teams against Ivy teams, and now the Ivies are no more.  Two of
today's games pit Big Ten against non-Big-Ten teams, and a third is a
rematch of the all-Big-Ten CCHA final.
 
        Maybe the Big (5) Ten and Ancient (6) Eight should merge to
form an 11-team super-conference.  (The "Big Ivy"?)  The remnants of
the CCHA and ECAC could merge, except Vermont and Alaska-Fairbanks,
forming a twelve-team conference.  (With Colgate and Bowling Green as
travel partners!)  The WCHA would add Fairbanks, Mankato and UNO and
get to keep their stupid ten-team playoff format.  Hockey East would
add UVM to end up with ten teams, simplifying the scheduling.
 
        Makes as much sense as any other plan to split up the ECAC.
 
                                         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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