The NCAA News - News and Features

The NCAA News -- July 19, 1999

Lacrosse committee studies impact of automatic berths

During the meeting of the National Collegiate and Division III Women's Lacrosse Committees June 8-11, in Park City, Utah, the National Collegiate committee responded to a Division I Championships/Competition Cabinet request to implement automatic bids for the National Collegiate championship.

Currently, 11 of the teams in the 12-team tournament are selected at large. For the past two years, the 12th spot has been reserved for the top team in Division II.

The committee noted that it is strongly opposed to the automatic-qualification concept for the year 2000 with the current 12-team bracket for a variety of reasons. The primary concern is the impact on the championship itself. Under the current system, every team has the opportunity to be selected to participate based on its performance relative to the selection criteria. The committee holds that automatic qualification would eliminate from contention strong teams that did not win their conference, which would diminish the integrity of the championship because some of the country's strongest teams might be left out.

Further, if such a change were made for 2000, schools would have difficulty adjusting their schedules and budgets accordingly to maximize their chance for qualification, since many schedules and budgets already have been established. The goal of the changes for schools in strong conferences that meet the qualifying criteria would be for schools to add stronger nonconference opponents with the goal of preserving a chance for an at-large bid if the team did not win its conference. Teams that are not members of an eligible conference would likely to seek to improve their schedules under automatic qualification, since their access would be reduced.

The committees hold that if automatic qualification is coming, it should be postponed until 2001, and that the bracket should be expanded to 16 teams to give conference nonchampions and independents a better chance to qualify.

The National Collegiate committee also recommended that legislation be proposed to establish a Division I championship by eliminating Division II access to the championship. The committee recommended that if the championship remains a National Collegiate event, the automatic Division II bid should be eliminated. The automatic bid for a Division II representative was added for the 1998 championship.

During much of the meeting, the National Collegiate and Division III committees met together. In those meetings, both committees reaffirmed the value of having both championships at a common site on the same day, but made minor logistical revisions.

The committees' main concern was to avoid giving Division III the feeling of being a warm-up game for the National Collegiate championship. One way to alleviate that will be adding more time between the respective championship games so that the Division III winner will have more time to celebrate before vacating the field for the National Collegiate pregame activities to begin.

The committees noted that the format of having both championships on the same day at a common site provides for more opportunities to have the game televised. This year's championships were aired regionally by Home Team Sports. Satellite coordinates were published for the convenience of viewers out of the regional areas.

In another joint action, the committees established on-site arrival times for officials who are working the tournament on the Friday before play begins. National Collegiate officials must arrive on site in time for a 10:30 a.m. meeting, while Division III officials must arrive in time for their 8 p.m. meeting. Previously, there was no deadline set for arrival.

Both committees also recommended to their respective divisional governing body that the officials' per diem for the championships be increased from $30 to $50. The committees also recommended that one more official be assigned to each game to operate the game clock.

After noting that they were pleased with this year's championships at Johns Hopkins, the committee announced that it is soliciting bids for the 2001 championships.

In the Division III committee meeting, after a review of its selection criteria for automatic qualification, the committee decided to make no major changes.

The Division III committee also set dates for regional championships on May 13 and 14, which is a Saturday and Sunday. In the past, first-round games were held on a Wednesday and second-round games were on the following Saturday.