On April 5, the 2006 NCAA Division I women’s basketball champion will be crowned, the clean-up from another sell-out crowd at the Women’s Final Four will have begun, and few people will remember the months of studying game tape, the consecutive string of 20-hour work days and the hours of late-night deliberation it took to make it all happen.

Except for the 10 people who made it all happen.

They are the volunteer members of the Division I Women’s Basketball Committee who have temporarily traded in their day jobs for perhaps the most rewarding and energizing — but also highly scrutinized — task of their administrative careers: selecting the 64-team field for one of the most visible championships in college sports.

While those committee members can anticipate a job well done on April 5, it’s not April 5 yet...

...It’s 11 a.m. on March 11 and the committee is 56 hours away from the championship bracket being unveiled on ESPN for the world to see.

Committee Chair Joni Comstock stands in front of an easel on which the names of 14 teams are written in bold marker. She studies the board while fellow committee members pore over information in small sidebar conversations or at their individual laptop stations.

It is Comstock’s responsibility to keep the group on target and to sense when it’s best to push forward or for the group to take a collective deep breath.

Sue Donohoe, the NCAA vice president for Division I women’s basketball, is in the room along with six other staff members to provide support.

The goal of this particular session in the selection process is to accomplish what may be the group’s toughest task — culling the field for the final eight spots.

While only 14 names are on the board, committee members can nominate others for consideration. After 10 minutes, Comstock asks for deliberations to begin. Members discuss the merits of each team in detail, then teams are grouped with others that have similar profiles.

Committee refer to and discuss the various components of the “nitty-gritty” reports that are available on their laptops. The reports are a snapshot of a team’s entire body of work, including:

• Overall Rating Percentage Index
• Nonconference strength of schedule
• Opponents’ strength of schedule
• Opponents’ nonconference strength of schedule
• Conference RPI
• Road record
• Record in the last 10 games
• Record against teams ranked 1-25, 26-50, 51-100, 101-200 and those over 200.

These and other elements enter the conversation at one point or another as committee members try to find ways to determine what teams have done to separate themselves from others in the tournament or from those still under consideration. Minute differences often are the deciding factors. One bad loss or a really good win could determine whether a team is in or out.

But those decisions aren’t always obtained by raw numbers. Each committee member is assigned up to three or four conferences to monitor during the year. All have watched well over 100 games since the season tipped off in November. Whether on television or in person, several teams will have to pass the “eye test.”

“Our committee members have strong basketball backgrounds,” Comstock said. “Many were coaches themselves. All of us spend a great deal of time watching games and we are trying to evaluate if teams are better at the end of the year than earlier in the season.”

In this session, while hard data are readily available, the human element can’t be ignored. There is no tried-and-true formula to balance the two.

One criterion may stick in the mind of one committee member, while another member sees value in something else. As the dialogue becomes more spirited, Donohoe interjects some timely advice.

“It’s important to remember that what matters to you is to be applied consistently across the board,” Donohoe tells the group. “You have to consider all the available information as consistently as possible. You can’t say, ‘I’m going to use one filter for one team but not for another.’ That’s where you may find the differentiation between these teams.”

At 12:15 p.m., Comstock calls for a halt to the meeting, and members leave the boardroom on the third floor of the downtown Indianapolis Westin. They file past the armed Indiana state trooper, who sits at a table just outside the door to provide security, and into the lounge next door where they have lunch.

While they eat, all of the televisions are tuned to the Colonial Athletic Association tournament final between Old Dominion University and James Madison University. Old Dominion eventually wins a four-point game and grabs an automatic berth into the field of 64.

The committee then reconvenes in the boardroom to finish selecting the at-large teams.

Face of the committee

It is apparent that more lively discussion will occur once lunch is over, but Comstock is pleased with the tone and direction of the process so far.

“We’re at mid-day Saturday, and I like where we are,” said the athletics director at American University. “It’s a little different every year. We’re going to see some logjams in terms of selections and seeding because the teams are so much more competitive. This is going to challenge us a bit more. The technology we have access to improves every year. The teams are equally matching the technology with their level of play.”

Comstock is in her final year on the committee and she’s ending her service at an exciting time in the evolution of women’s basketball. The inaugural Selection Monday has given the sport its own night to highlight its bracket, and the tournament continues to move toward its ultimate goal of all games being played at neutral sites.

Comstock appreciates how far the game has come and she relishes the opportunity to play a role in how it will grow.

“Serving on this committee is a significant responsibility,” she said. “We’re still at the point where we’re trying to advance the game. Everything we do matters.”

Comstock actually is in her second term on the committee. During her days at Purdue, she represented the Mideast region. But she changed jobs to become the athletics director at the University of North Carolina, Asheville, and had to resign her position on the committee.

To prepare for her role as chair, Comstock watched her predecessor, University of Memphis Associate Athletics Director Lynn Parkes. The primary lessons, she said, were to work hard, ensure that the championship is administered in a way to maximize each student-athlete’s experience and “enjoy the moment.”

The rookie

Tina Cheatham is in her first year on the committee, although she does bring a measure of experience to the process by having served on the Division I Women’s Volleyball Committee.

She already has noticed the uniqueness of the two appointments.

“In volleyball, you don’t get a chance to see as many games,” said Cheatham, an associate commissioner of the Southland Conference. “On this committee you have a better chance to have seen many teams. That doesn’t mean it’s easier, but you have more information available to you.”

Like the rest of the committee, Cheatham began evaluating teams in November. Each committee member has satellite service, and everyone becomes familiar with the TiVo option.

They have to, given that their committee service is on the side. Everyone has their real job responsibilities. Being a committee member adds heavily to the workload, but it is a sacrifice Cheatham is willing to make.

“I’ve compared this to my graduate work,” she said. “Outside of my job, it has taken over and consumed all of my free time. It has become my hobby. There is no longer the yard, the projects or watching other television. In graduate work, you always had assignments to do and spent a lot of time in the library. All your free time went to your graduate work. That is what committee service is like for this five-month period.”

Cheatham has been impressed with the committee chemistry, and she is soaking up advice from the more experienced members.

“The best part is that everyone is working diligently and coming forward with ideas and opinions,” she said. “If you happen to overlook something, there is someone there to point it out. It’s refreshing when you can question things and have people give you an honest response. There are no hard feelings.”

Cheatham is motivated to serve on the committee by her 13 years as an athletics administrator at Texas A&M University, College Station.

“I feel a tremendous amount of responsibility,” she said. “I know what it is like to be on the other end with our coaches, sitting there waiting to hear the announcement to see where we’re going or if we’re hosting. I’ve been on the upside and downside of that.”

Each committee member has to balance their everyday job with the demands of a high-profile bracket selection process. If she weren’t in Indianapolis during selection week, Cheatham said she would be administering the Southland Conference tournament.

“I had to leave before our semifinals and finals,” Cheatham said. “It can take a toll on everyone, but I try to get everything squared away ahead of time. Normally, it would be my cell phone that would be ringing.”

Veteran leadership

Judy Southard, an associate athletics director at Louisiana State University, will succeed Comstock as chair. This year she is working closely with Comstock to pick up the nuances of the job. Southard previously chaired the Division II Women’s Basketball Committee and served on the Women’s Gymnastics Committee.

She is a strong believer in mentoring. She said all committee members call each other during the season, which can lead to some friendly advice.

“I spent some time on the phone with Tina (Cheatham) a couple of months ago, and we spoke about the technology available to us,” Southard said. “We can go into a secure Web site and look at team sheets, RPI and other things. That helps, because when you first come in, you can feel overwhelmed with the process.”

Upon arriving in Indianapolis, all 10 members are asked to provide a list of the 64 teams they think should be in the tournament. That gives the committee a starting point when discussions begin.

Several members arrived in Indianapolis on March 9, the day before actual business begins. No formal dinner arrangements were made, but the group decided to walk downtown for a casual dinner.

The mood was lighthearted, since each member knew serious deliberations would dominate the rest of their stay in Indianapolis. The camaraderie was evident in the nicknames and jokes that were shared.

“There is a form of bonding — it almost becomes like a little sorority,” Southard said. “You really rely on each other. We communicated often during the season and a lot of that has to do with the fact that we all anticipated that this was going to be a difficult selection. We didn’t want to leave ourselves hanging out there in case someone wasn’t sensing something about a certain team.”

A bracket revealed

The committee puts the finishing touches on the 2006 bracket on Monday, March 13. ESPN is provided an advanced copy of the bracket so the network can plan its selection show.

Comstock prepares for her appearance on the show, and the other members of the group provide help. She is a little more at ease after hearing good news about her parents, who could not be immediately located after a stormy night in Illinois.

Communication was difficult in the aftermath of a series of tornadoes, but she receives a call from her sister around 11 p.m. that their parents made it to a shelter and all is well.

Now, she can fully focus on answering questions about the committee’s decisions. She knows what is coming — every year various teams whose names don’t appear on the bracket feel slighted and others aren’t happy with their seeding.

“We take time to sit back as committee members and play devil’s advocate with Joni,” Southard said. “We sit with the bracket on the wall, and we try to think of questions she’s going to get. The chair needs that kind of support.”

Comstock faces the critics on the selection show and then on an hour-long teleconference in which 44 reporters seek more answers. Sure enough, there are complaints that the bracket isn’t balanced, that North Carolina, the top-seeded team in the field, has a tougher road than other top seeds, that Tennessee should have been a 1, not a 2, and that a possible Duke-Connecticut matchup in the Bridgeport regional gives the lower-seeded Huskies an advantage.

Comstock patiently and professionally explains the committee’s rationale for all those decisions and others. Then she participates in an online chat on ESPN.com where more than 1,400 additional questions await. By the time she answers one question, hundreds more pour in. The media obligations wrap up with an appearance on ESPN Radio around 11 p.m.

Through it all, Comstock receives ample support from Southard and Donohoe, who are present throughout the media obligations.

“We deliberated a great deal about the final few teams selected,” Comstock said. “We also knew the top three lines would be difficult to seed this year. To me, the volume of questions shows how much people care about the tournament.”

But the work is hardly over for committee members. On Tuesday the 14th, they return briefly to their campus and conference jobs before hitting the road again March 16 as representatives at various preliminary-round sites.

Comstock returns to Indianapolis on March 17 and stays through the weekend, where she helps monitor the games from the control room on the first floor of the NCAA national office.

“I talked to many of the committee members and almost felt removed from the rest of the team,” she said. “I was talking to (committee member) Cindy Hartmann, and she said, ‘I can’t talk anymore, because the teams are coming out to practice.’

“If there are questions regarding the administration of the games, this is the place they will call.”

In all, committee members will be on the road for about 25 days from the time they travel to Indianapolis until the Women’s Final Four concludes.

“You very quickly flip the switch,” Southard said. “You have to get your travel plans ready to go and tie up everything in your own office.

“We have to go to the next mode.”

Until April 5 anyway.