October
14, 2008
Travel
Cost Considerations Could Affect NCAA Tournament
By Joe Gladziszewski
Coming
this spring to the NCAA Tournament Regional venue nearest
you – your team, and (probably) other teams from your
team's conference.
NCAA committees are currently considering
and implementing a three-tier plan that includes re-defining
NCAA championship tournament seeding and bracketing. The
goal is to minimize travel costs for all championships across
all divisions, according to an NCAA memo recently acquired
by Inside College Hockey.
If passed and approved by NCAA presidents
and its executive committee this January, here's what it
means for Division I men's ice hockey: Unless you're a No.
1 seed, the NCAA tournament bracketing philosophy will strongly
emphasize geographic proximity – keeping eastern teams
in the east, and western teams in the west.
Instead of seeding teams based on bands and
protecting bracket integrity, as has been done in recent
years, only four of 16 teams would be seeded, earning top
seeds in each region. The rest of the region would be determined
by geography to minimize travel expenses for participating
teams. In order to accommodate these new objectives, the
recommendations include disregarding previously-established
"working principles" of tournament selection to
allow for first-round matches between members of the same
conference.
RATIONALE AND HISTORY
The NCAA pays for the costs associated with
its championships in all sports across all three divisions.
In an effort to reduce those costs – which have risen
more than 50 percent over the last three years – the
NCAA staff presented the NCAA Division I Championships/Sport
Management Cabinet with several recommendations in order
to develop a cost-management plan that would immediately
impact championship tournaments beginning as soon as this
current fall season.
The first tier of a three-tier plan of recommendations
has already been approved for Fall 2008. These recommendations
more clearly define issues to help with reducing travel
costs – issues such as the mandated practice times
for participating schools; avoiding choosing regions that
traditionally have higher costs; using alternate shipping
methods for equipment transportation than paying a baggage
fee that travelers face on many commercial flights; and
more widely using in-house bracketing software that includes
distances between participating schools and potential regional
sites.
TIMELINE AND STATUS
The second tier of recommendations is a simple
measure designed to give greater flexibility when transporting
teams. It would cause a change in the NCAA Championship
travel policy so that teams would travel by ground transportation
within a 400-mile radius from the site of competition instead
of 350 miles. Also, participating teams would be flown to
the most cost-reasonable airport within 150 miles of the
site, as opposed to within a 120-mile radius.
Significance: While the
30-mile radius change may not seem like a big difference,
it would mean that Chicago's O'Hare International Airport
would qualify as a nearest airport to a regional in Madison,
Wis. since it is greater than 120 miles, but less than 150
miles from UW-Madison. New York City, Hartford, and Boston
would all serve teams participating in this year's upcoming
East Regional in Bridgeport, Conn. if their campus is located
outside of the 400-mile radius from Bridgeport.
The second-tier mileage initiative was implemented
for fall 2008 championships. There will be additional consideration
in the next few weeks regarding the second-tier and third-tier
recommendations.
The third-tier of recommendations includes
the two following major points:
Significance: Most importantly,
the memo only concerns how the teams are bracketed once
they are selected. It does not specify that there are a
balanced number of teams in the tournament from each region.
For example, if 10 teams from western conferences qualify
for the tournament, they would all be in the tournament,
but two or more of them would play in eastern-based regionals,
possibly as number-one seeds.
Currently, the NCAA is asking for feedback
and impact statements from committees and coaches associations,
with an Oct. 20 deadline. Conversations will continue over
the next several days in all sports in all divisions. Some
Division I men's hockey leagues have already met and others
are meeting via conference call this week to provide feedback
regarding these recommendations. Once the feedback is compiled
and evaluated, the NCAA Division I Championships/Sports
Management Cabinet will develop final recommendations for
a vote in mid-January by the NCAA Presidential bodies and
Executive Committee.
IMPACT
The NCAA memo included two hypothetical alternatives
to last year's Division I men's ice hockey tournament bracket,
illustrating how the tournament would have been bracketed
if these emphasized travel points were in place at the time.
Only the brackets were presented. There were no explanations
on how the committee arrived at each hypothetical scenario.
ACTUAL
2008 NCAA TOURNAMENT BRACKET |
East Region
(Albany, N.Y.) |
Northeast Region
(Worcester, Mass.) |
Midwest Region
(Madison, Wis.) |
West Region
(Colorado Springs, Colo.) |
Michigan * |
Miami * |
North Dakota * |
New Hampshire * |
St. Cloud State |
Boston College |
Denver |
Colorado College |
Clarkson |
Minnesota |
Wisconsin |
Michigan State |
Niagara |
Air Force |
Princeton |
Notre Dame |
2008 NCAA TOURNAMENT BRACKET — SCENARIO 1 |
East Region
(Albany, N.Y.) |
Northeast Region
(Worcester, Mass.) |
Midwest Region
(Madison, Wis.) |
West Region
(Colorado Springs, Colo.) |
Michigan * |
New Hampshire * |
North Dakota * |
Miami * |
St. Cloud State |
Boston College |
Denver |
Colorado College |
Clarkson |
Minnesota |
Wisconsin |
Michigan State |
Niagara |
Princeton |
Notre Dame |
Air Force |
2008
NCAA TOURNAMENT BRACKET — SCENARIO 2 |
East Region
(Albany, N.Y.) |
Northeast Region
(Worcester, Mass.) |
Midwest Region
(Madison, Wis.) |
West Region
(Colorado Springs, Colo.) |
Michigan * |
New Hampshire * |
Miami * |
North Dakota * |
Clarkson |
Boston College |
St. Cloud State |
Colorado College |
Notre Dame |
Michigan State |
Minnesota |
Denver |
Niagara |
Princeton |
Wisconsin |
Air Force |
Also of note, in both of the hypothetical
brackets, the semifinal games at the Frozen Four would match
the East and Northeast Regional winners in one semifinal
and the Midwest and West Regional winners in the other semifinal,
increasing the probability for an east versus west national
championship game.
We won't know until January if these recommendations
are presented to and passed by the highest levels of NCAA
governance, but until then, we can picture the distinct
possibility that conversations held in post-game handshake
lines at league tournaments in March will shift from, "Good
game," and "Good luck," to "See you
next weekend."
— Jess Myers contributed to
this report.