A TV pitchman once claimed that his employer made money "the old-fashioned way."

"We earn it," he said.

With changes the NCAA Men's and Women's Skiing Committee made in the allocation process for qualifiers for the skiing championships, qualifiers to future championships will be following that adage, too.

Just as all other team/individual championship sports committees, the skiing committee -- when allocating regional qualifiers for the coming season's championship -- must balance the reward for the top student-athletes with ensuring a broad representation of teams from all regions.

Before this year, the committee's focus was on having a relatively high fixed number of qualifiers reserved for each region's "owned" slots, per gender and discipline, no matter how that region performed in the most recent championships. Now its emphasis will be on rewarding a particular region's championship performance during the previous two years. Since the total number of qualifiers is likely to remain the same, one region gains a qualifier only at the expense of another.

Whereas the committee used to scratch 10 deep in each race's results from the previous two seasons, the committee now digs 20 places deeper and examines the top 30 finishers.

"We increased the size of the pool that we look at in each region," said Cami Cardenali, chair of the committee and women's Nordic coach at Dartmouth College. "Rather than looking at who is at the top, we are looking more at the depth (of each region's performance)."

Sten Fjeldheim, coach at Northern Michigan University -- typically the Central region's strongest program -- and a first-year committee member, said he would have preferred looking at the top half of the field (which would be smaller) but the compromise still will be beneficial. Although the final numbers won't look much different this year, the change could have repercussions in the future.

"This is a big deal for us," Cardenali said. "We agonized over it for a long time. Everybody felt that they (their region) gave up something."

Balancing nuances

Many team/individual sports committees go back only one season to determine earned spots. Skiing goes back two years because of one of a few unique twists that complicate its process. The site of the championships rotates from an Eastern site to a Western site each year. (Central-site Alpine facilities don't meet the vertical-drop requirements). Western sites are typically at a higher altitude, so the Western skiers typically do better at those sites as a whole because they train at a similar altitude all year. Looking at the previous two years provides balance.

Other skiing nuances further complicate allocation. Unlike many other team/ individual sports, skiing's championships are decided by adding the points scored by both men's and women's results, even though the genders race separately. Alpine, also known as downhill skiing, has two regions -- East and West; Nordic, also known as cross country skiing, has three -- East, Central and West. Each team can send a maximum of three skiers per gender per discipline, so if a team has qualified the maximum number and a region has earned another qualifier, the next skier in the standings from a different team from that region advances. All of those potential complications create a wait-and-see view of the effect of the change. But at least one coach (who coaches two schools) is convinced that the Central is better off than it had been because now a region will get more qualifiers if it earns them, up to a point.

"We (the Central) could have put every one of our skiers in the top 10 (at the championships) before and still not earned more qualifiers for our region for the next season," said Mike Nightingale, Nordic coach for both St. Olaf College and Carleton College. "We had almost maxed out the formula."

Fjeldheim said it was important that the committee adopt a new method to help skiing grow around the country.

"The whole idea was to try to change the East-West way of thinking that the committee had in the past," Fjeldheim said, "and I think we accomplished that.

"I'm glad that the committee was ready to do this because our region (previously) had no way to grow (in terms of getting more qualifiers). This makes things a little less cushy and that's the only way we can get better as a sport."

Others contend that while some Central individual skiers may be faster, only skiers from teams capable of winning the championship (that is, those that field full Alpine and Nordic teams) should have access to those spots. Nightingale said he is pleased that this reasoning did not prevent making a change.

"If your team is in a position to vie for the championship, you're already going to have those skiers qualify, so this won't make any difference,"

said Nightingale, who previously coached at St. Lawrence University, which is in the East region. "What this change could do is take a skier away from a team that may have had a full field of qualifiers previously but did not have a realistic shot at the championship. Some of these teams in the East have had full teams qualify for years and, understandably, they didn't want to give that up."

Negligible change this year

For this season, when an observer compares the regional distribution of the 2002 championships field with that of 2001, the only difference in regional makeup will be that men's East Nordic has taken one qualifier from men's Central Nordic. But the composition of the totals has changed, and that's what could have future repercussions.

"The goal of each region will be to get as many skiers into the top 30 at nationals as it can, which should involve skiers from more teams," said Terry Aldrich, Nordic coach at Middlebury College and secretary-rules editor for the committee, who did much of the number crunching for the committee.

The regional allocations for Alpine (downhill) this year are nine for each gender. Last year each got 15. The number of earned slots increased from five to 17 for each gender.

In Nordic raw numbers in both the East and West, the regular number of slots has been reduced from 15 to eight for the East and West and from six to four in the Central. The committee increased the available earned slots from three to 19.

Cardenali said that much of the impetus for the change came from the West and the Central.

"There is a feeling from the West in particular that they have a stronger field so they should be able to go

deeper (and have more qualifiers)," she said. "But also, when we went down to three skiers per discipline, that left more people home (instead of at the championship) and made this more of an issue."

That happened in 1995, when the then-NCAA Executive Committee reduced the field from 160 to 148.

"Even before that change, people had rumbled about this for years and we finally took action," Cardenali said. "Balancing the Central and (it's not having) Alpine has been a huge issue.

We have talked about it for years but never seriously considered doing anything about it until this year."

University of New Mexico coach George Brooks, who was the chair when this change was passed, said the adjustment in the formula is more conceptual than substantive for now, which is nonetheless important because it showed the committee responding to what appeared to be a mandate from coaches.

"We are looking at such a large field (30) that it negates the effect of having more earned slots," Brooks said. "Thirty is too large a number and 10 was too small. Twenty may be about right but the committee was reluctant to go that far. Twenty would not have passed last year but it might in the future."

Fjeldheim pointed out that with such a small number of qualifiers to start with (148 men and women combined), any change is likely to seem small in terms of raw numbers, but that doesn't mean it's insignificant.

"With so few athletes competing at such a high level, it's hard to make a change that is going to appear to be huge, but these are healthy changes for the sport as a whole," he said.

Cardenali said her own region may be the most vocal opposition to the decision.

"If anyone objects, they would be mostly from the East because we're probably a little weaker (Alpine and Nordic combined)," she said.

But if the change makes the sport as a whole stronger, all may win in the long run.