[My sincere apologies if this gets sent twice.]
 
 
> Cheryl A. Morris wrote:
>
> Best 2 of three on campus sites?  Why bother.  The home team will win
> probably 80% of the time.  That may underestimate the home advantage.
 
> Satow, Clay wrote:
>
> To me, playing games on-campus is too much of an advantage to the higher
> seeded team, and it's especially unfair since seeding is such an inexact
> science.  It also smacks of a Division 3 or minor sport type concept.
NCAA
> D1 hockey is big time now.
 
 
A problem with "neutral" sites in the West is that they're not really
neutral due to the distance.  The closest school will often have the crowd
majority.  Is it fair to give the lower-seeded team the home crowd?
 
I'm a Sioux grad, so a Sioux example comes to mind.  In 1998, UND was upset
at Yost in Ann Arbor by Michigan.  USCHO's game summary even provides some
tasty quotes:
 
 "'The crowd was awesome,' said Michigan head coach Red
 Berenson. 'Incredible. I think it would have been embarrassing
 for anybody not to give their best with this crowd and the
 environment here.
 
 'Was it fair to have this game at Yost? Maybe it wasn't fair.'
 
 'I thought it was a real exciting game,' said [UND Coach]
 Blais. 'It was a tough one to lose. I'm sure the fans enjoyed
 it.'"
 
If the site had been somewhere else in Michigan (given it's not the upper
peninsula) I would expect that pretty much the same crowd would be there.
It sucked, but I'm not trying to cry sour grapes today; I'm using this to
illustrate to our Eastern friends what can happen out here.  Cheryl proposes
an (arbitrary) 80% advantage for the favored home team--is it better to
potentially give lower-ranked teams the home-crowd advantage?
 
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