Re: 2019 NCAA Tournament Thread - Regionals are the best weekend of hockey all year
Very much agree with your approach that the "inaccuracies" can average out over the years.
And to be fair to the players, while statistically it works itself out over a number of years, it doesn't do much for the players (as far as the fairness goes) who stay with the team at most 4 years (and are likely not going to go to the tournament every year).
It would be really helpful if posters from the East could simply acknowledge that, and participate in the search for a solution. Instead, "I'm not taking a position; it's not my fight" is a typical reaction. That's what I hear you saying in the above comment. If you care about the long term health of the regionals -- and I believe you do -- you should engage and try to move the puck forward.
Look, I already said I am all for campus tournaments. As far as my tone goes, frankly, the only reason I am reserved because I am honestly not that familiar with the situation (and all the dynamics between different programs, teams, ADs and fan bases) in the West. I am somewhat informed about the East (Hockey East specifically). I wish I could contribute "moving the puck forward", but other than a chance conversation with an AD of one of the HE schools (as I described below), I am just a very average college hockey fan.
I wanted to take this item seriously, and tried to look at it from the point of view of each of the 8 teams seeded #2 or #3 this year. My conclusion? Nobody's talking about it because none of those teams were treated unfairly. Including Ohio State. Given the constraints of this year's rules & sites, of course.
Do you have a specific example from a previous tournament?
Here's one (though I really don't want to go back and analyze every bracket), and it's just from 2018: Northeastern and BU were put as (#3 and #4) in Worcester (Holy Cross was the host). Believe me, the support those two teams (specifically BU) would get in Worcester far surpasses what PC gets in Providence. Of course, now the question is - was there a better solution? Swapping BU with Air Force, or even better with Tech (in Bridgeport)? Or 2015, where everyone talks about PC's placement as #4 seed, but BC's placement as #3 seed is not that much more fair, at least with respect to Denver (could have put them in Manchester and bring Minnesota in, or South Bend and swap with Harvard). I don't know, it's all history now...
That is an interesting story, and I'm going to let your information percolate for a while. Even though it didn't work out for Hockey East, having a conference host a set of regionals might be a productive idea for the West. Why not? Conferences have served as hosts for the FF.
In the story I told, I gave HE campus examples. The negotiations were not specifically between HE and NCAA only. As far as their tourney, Hockey East schools came to an agreement for their conference tourney (this is what I meant earlier by "dynamics" between the schools) - it seems that HE schools are able to present a much more unified front when dealing with NCAA. It seems (to me, correct me if I'm wrong) that the teams in the West are much more rivalry-first oriented.
NU, CC and Quinnipiac are the only MAAC schools left with hockey.