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Some opinions on the tourney selection committee: 1. The committee selecting and seeding tournament teams should not include representatives from teams under consideration. Although the individuals involved might be totally honorable, to participate in the process when your team is being considered is clearly a conflict of interest. I know there's the "leave the room" rule, but an individual either loses his voice when discussing other teams or is forced to argue for or against a team competing with his own. (No offense intended by the use of masculine pronouns - has there ever been a woman on the selection committee?) 2. But aren't the selection criteria pretty cut and dried - anyone should be able to apply them? "Answer" A: If so, why do we need a high-powered committee? "Answer" B: Who decides the criteria in the first place and how they should be weighted? Oh - we'll let the committee do that. Example: League tournament games are no more important than regular season games. Is this a universal truth? The first public discussion that I recall from the committee on criteria during the discussed 90-91 season was at about this point in the season when some aspects (like out of league record) were already pretty well set. 3. If there were clear well-defined criteria, does the committee need to be set for the entire season? Clearly, if a condition for committee membership was "no chance my team will be under consideration" - it might be difficult to recruit members at the start of the season. Shawn Walsh would probably never be able to serve (:>). However, would it be unreasonable for say Jack Parker (BU coach and committee member) to resign from the committee now in favor of some other Hockey East representative. Sure - the new guy's team might sneak into the tourney by winning the league tourney, but then somebody else could take his spot. Note that this requires those agreed upon general criteria specified in advance so that someody could join the committee and get up to speed easily. 4. On Cornell vs. SLU in 1991: A rational case could be made for either team (or even both) being included in the tourney that year - I recall lots of discussion and good arguments on precisely that topic on hockey-l at the time. The relevant point regarding the selection committee was that both committee members from the East (Cornell's Kennedy and BU's Parker) had teams which got attractive draws - Cornell making the field over SLU and BU getting a 2nd (or 3rd?) seed as one of four HE teams selected while ECAC regular season AND tourney champ (Clarkson) was seeded 4th in the East. That gave Clarkson a path through No. 1 ranked Lake Superior - which they survived only to lose (to BU?) in the semis. Maybe the seedings were done correctly/ maybe not - remember the committee makes the rules as well as interprets them. Whatever the case, the "controversy" was magnified by the conflict of interest. 5. What about Joe Marsh? He's a good guy and should do a fine job on the committee. I only hope that he gets a chance to emulate Jerry York and resign because his team is always in contention! Or maybe this is a bad omen for the 1993-94 year? It looks like the this year's Saints might be headed for another year like 90-91 "on the bubble", although maybe their 5-2-1 out-of league record (all against HE 4-1-1 and CCHA 1-1-0) will help more this time - unless the committee "adjusts" its criteria... Robin Lock [log in to unmask]