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:

  • The number of seeded teams shall be limited to 25 percent of the bracket.
  • Geographic proximity is a factor for all sports in the bracket pairing process and should be emphasized at the sport committee level.

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.