This is probably just adding fuel to the fire, and it's probably been discussed ad infinitum in years past, but why does there even have to be automatic bids? Why can't we just have the 12 BEST TEAMS in the tournament? Of course, determining the 12 best leads to all kinds of arguments, but that's a different story, I believe, or is that why we have automatic bids in the first place? Hypothetically, what if one year every team in the WCHA was unbelievably awesome and, for some reason, Hockey East teams were just plain awful. In fact, in this year the best Hockey East team probably would've finished 6th or 7th in the WCHA. (Once again, this is purely hypothetical). Is it right that the winner of HE gets in the tournament before the 3rd or 4th place WCHA team? I'm not sure, but my first impression is "no". I know that college hoops has the automatic bid for each conference, often being the winner of the post-season conference tournament. Perhaps they have more luxury because their tournament is bigger (too big, IMHO). The purpose of the NC$$ tournament is to crown the National Champion, that is, again IMHO, to find the BEST team in the country. Seems only logical we should start with the BEST 12 (or 64, for hoops) teams. ************************************************************************** Steve Weisfeldt Go River Hawks!!!!!!!! Univ. of Lowell (now UMASS-Lowell) 1986, 1988 [log in to unmask] Is it October yet?????? **************************************************************************