I took the opportunity tonight to visit with Ian McCaw, U Mass AD and
Chair of the Division I Men's Ice Hockey Committee.

Among our topics of conversation was his quote in Adam Woden's USCHO
article "Committee Adds New NCAA Selection Criteria"
(http://uscollegehockey.com/news/2003/02/26_006290.php):

    "This will add a little mystery to [selection] Sunday," said McCaw.

I asked him if he thought college hockey fans wanted mystery added to
selection Sunday.  The gist of his responses, if I heard them correctly
(and probably did NOT), were that he favors the most fair and open
selection possible.  He thought the quote was taken a little out of
context. I *think* he said that some other NCAA sports use this secret
RPI adjustment, but he hopes to convince the NCAA it should be made
public.  It sounded like we won't learn the exact "secret ingredient" on
selection Sunday.

I also asked McCaw to rank the chances of using KRACH in the future ...
  on a scale between "No, when hell freezes over" and "Yes, I want to
get that done".  He said (paraphrased) "We're committed to selecting the
best teams".  He said, I think, the committee would like to look at any
method that would be superior to the current method.  The small
adjustments this year were attempts to fine tune the current method to
make the best selections they could.

I wished that we each would have had time to discuss a couple of related
topics (how is his committee's selection rules affected or dictated by
the NCAA, outside of his committee, and if there were a group of
proponents to a different selection method, what would be appropriate
and reasonable ways of getting it considered and evaluated).  Since Mr.
McCaw had such a good time tonight (UMass 5-3 victory), maybe I'll ask
tomorrow!  ;-)

--
cheers, wayne