> At the start, at least, I doubt the MAAC will be at the same level of
> play as the other conferences. The Committee is going to have to decide
> whether to treat the MAAC on the same level as the four established
> conferences or not.
>
> If they do, then what happens (assuming a 12-team tournament, still) if
> Quinnipiac, Clarkson and BU (for example) all win both regular season and
> playoff titles?
 
You would think that the committee would take the top 2 of those three by
PWR, give them the auto byes, and move on.  But imagine instead if
Quinnipiac and Cornell for example sweep their RS and PS, while HE splits
between two schools, but Quinnipiac and the other MAAC schools don't even
rank above 20th in the PWR.  Does the committee really give a bye to
Quinnipiac?
 
If they want to encourage the new conference and strengthen it, then you
could argue both yes and no.  Yes, because that is equal treatment with the
other East conferences (does that mean 2 guaranteed bids for each of three
East conferences though?  Wow.).  No, because admission to the tourny of
any new conference program will probably be a "gift" of sorts for a few
seasons, at least statistically.
 
What I suspect will shake out of all this is that the new conference will
have a couple strong and serious programs which will dominate for a few
years and then be tempted to jump to an established conference (ECAC or
CCHA, name your poison).  Between now and then we might have a bid to the
MAAC the way we did for the Indies in the 80's.  Those bids did produce a
couple excellent candidate teams of course -- Merrmiack and Anchorage --
and now they are safely nestled in major conferences.
 
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