> ...and the committee would be obligated to select Michigan due to the
> "unwritten agreement" that a minimum of two teams will be selected
> from each automatic conference (CCHA, ECAC, HEA, WCHA).
 
Of course, my bad.  Each established conference gets auto-bids for its
RS and tournament champs, and at least two teams in any event.  (The
script knows that, but I didn't let it go that far.)  If Michigan or
MSU won the CCHA tournament in the situation I listed above, Michigan
would be in and either SLU or Quinnipiac would be out.  But there
would still be seven Eastern teams in the tournament either way, which
was my original point.
 
> Of course, in 2 years when the MAAC meets the standard for an automatic
> bid, we will probably have a situation where there are 5 automatic bids
> (only 1 per conference) & 7 at large bids distributed by the PWR, with
> the byes distributed by PWR also.  The automatic bid for the MAAC will
> make it hard to justify the "Colorado College Rule", the "Clarkson
> Rule", and the "Unwritten Agreement".
 
In fact, the status of the RS champion's bid was upgraded a couple of
years ago to a full-fledged auto bid, equal in name as well as fact to
that for the tournament champion.  And as far as I know the
requirement of two teams per conference
 
I think that with the rejection of a 16-team tournament by the NCAA,
the MAAC auto-bid got a lot farther off.  I think such an auto-bid
would come at the expense of an at-large bid rather than an auto-bid,
which is why adding it at the same time as three more auto bids would
have been the most likely scenario.
 
                                          John Whelan, Cornell '91
                                                  [log in to unmask]
                                     http://www.amurgsval.org/joe/
 
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