Re: Power rankings making conference play irrelevant
You could construct a scenario (whether it's a good one matters about how you feel about the leagues of smaller schools) where each league gets two bids: one for the regular season champion, one for the conference tournament champion, with two potential twists:
1. If the RS champ wins the tournament, they get a first-round bye.
2. If the RS champ wins the tournament, another at-large team can be added to the tournament.
I like the idea of RS and Playoff Champ getting auto-bids. But I'd change your twists. If the RS Champ wins is also the Playoff Champ, the Playoff Runner-up gets the other bid.
Back in 1994 Colorado College rose from last place the the previous season to win the WCHA regular season, but after being upset in the WCHA quarterfinals 2 games to 1, they were not selected for the NCAA tournament. There was much complaining about how autobids were awarded and how the regular season champion deserved an autobid. Supposedly the committee then added a "CC Rule" that the RS champion of each league would always be selected until the NCAA learned of the rule and let it be known that each league was to get only one autobid, determined by each league. I have no idea if such a rule was ever invoked, but no regular season champion missed the tournament until the formation of the MAAC in 1998-99, when no MAAC team made the NCAA tournament. The following season the CHA was formed and Niagara won the regular season and tournament titles and made the NCAA field as an at-large team. Then in 2001 Clarkson won the ECAC regular season, was upset in the quarterfinals 2 games to 1 and missed the NCAA tournament.
As for byes, the NCAA tournament had them from 1988 through 2002. In 1988 no teams won both league titles, in 1989 only one did, in 1990 all four did and in 1991 three teams did. Of the 8 teams only one, Clarkson in 1991, failed to get a bye. Again there was much complaining about how a regular season and tournament champion deserved a bye, with many calling for a "Clarkson Rule" to insure that would happen. To my knowledge no such rule was ever invoked by the committee, but no other double champion from Hockey East, ECAC, CCHA or WCHA missed the bye until Michigan in 2002. Niagara (CHA, 2000) and Mercyhurst (MAAC, 2001) also won both leagues titles, but did not receive byes.
The entire AQ-travesty seems to be about aping the NC$$ hoops model... Problem is, college hockey isn't a cash-cow at any level, and it's seriously moronic to apply that model here. There is absolutely no justification for that, no matter how you care to slice it.
Actually you have it backwards, since the automatic qualifiers in the basketball tournament are not the ones bringing in the money, it is the at-large teams from the power conferences that bring in the money. In fact, with 32 automatic qualifiers in the men's basketball tournament they could eliminate 36 teams from the tournament, but again, there would go the money.
Simply put, more AQs = more teams in D-I. More teams mean more scholarships and more opportunities for young men to get an education and maybe make the NHL. While it is true that the top talent still goes to the higher-profile leagues, there is an increasing amount of AHL-and-higher talent coming out of these schools.
This is currently happening in men's DI lacrosse. Just eight years ago there were only six conferences with autobids (the ACC was to small) and 60 teams. This year there are ten conferences (including the ACC) with autobids and 71 teams, with 2 more programs starting up next year.
The NCAA Men's Hockey Tournament already has more teams in it than they would be allowed by usual NCAA minimum guidelines of approximately 1 tournament team for every 7 teams in the sport. By that, hockey should only get 8 or 9 (8.6, exactly) teams in the tournament. So increasing the tournament size even more beyond 16 is probably unlikely.
It is much closer to 1 in 5 in men's basketball (68 out of 351, or 19.37%), so that would be back to 12 teams for hockey. However, the NCAA uses different numbers for different sports, so that is not a fixed ratio. For example, in men's lacrosse the NCAA had a 16 team tournament for 60 teams in 2010, slightly more than 1 out of 4 teams. With expansion to 71 teams they originally added 2 teams to go to 18, but dropped one and now have 17 teams, slightly less than 1 out of 4. In field hockey it is an 18 team field for 78 teams overall, just over 23%, or slightly less than 1 out of 4 teams and women's ice hockey has 8 out of 36 teams, 22%. So well men's hockey has one of the highest ratios, if not the highest, it is not as far out of wack as you make it seem.
But no matter what you think of the automatic qualifiers, the NCAA has clearly set out rules on how the are assigned to conferences and that is not likely to change.
Sean
