Couple of quick questions.....
1. Has there been any discussion on why the WCHA continues to call the semis and finals the "Final Five"? We're on year 3 of the conference....unless they are somehow changing the format to include 5 teams, can someone in the conference office sit down for five minutes and come up with something different? It is one of the dumber things I've ever seen in college athletics.
2. How many more years are they going to do the alternating sites between Grand Rapids/St. Paul? I don't know how it draws in St Paul, but Grand Rapids drew terrible in 2014....I think they'd be better off finding a smaller venue and just holding it in Milwaukee or Minnesota every year. Seems dumb to play in a 10-15,000 seat arena and nobody shows up.
Final Five
Re: Final Five
Actually the dumbest things in college athletics is having so many bowl games that you have to take teams that can't win half their games to play in them. They might as well let every team go bowling.
Re: Final Five
The name "Final Five" goes back to when the conference previously had a play-in game for the #4 seed. The conference has kept the name because it still has some marketing buzz going back to those days when they could fill the X in St. Paul for every game.
Next year's Final Five is in St. Paul. That's the only announced tournament location at the moment. The current four-year, alternating schedule was put in to place under the last commissioner. When we spoke Mr. Robertson we were told the conference was going to explore possibly paying in a more suitably-sized arena. The tournament just isn't going to draw 18,000 people anymore.
Next year's Final Five is in St. Paul. That's the only announced tournament location at the moment. The current four-year, alternating schedule was put in to place under the last commissioner. When we spoke Mr. Robertson we were told the conference was going to explore possibly paying in a more suitably-sized arena. The tournament just isn't going to draw 18,000 people anymore.
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Re: Final Five
Hopefully they find a spot that works....Id put it in the Minnesota/Wisconsin area and just leave it.
Otherwise I'd just cut out one weekend of the regular season and play best of 3 at home sites for 3 weekends, reseed the bracket after each series....that way you'd actually draw fans. If you win the regular season you're guaranteed to host all the way through unless you lose. You'd just have to make a rule that Alaska and Anchorage could never host unless they were playing each other. I know that sucks for them if the have a good year, but they should be thankful that the WCHA even kept them.
Otherwise I'd just cut out one weekend of the regular season and play best of 3 at home sites for 3 weekends, reseed the bracket after each series....that way you'd actually draw fans. If you win the regular season you're guaranteed to host all the way through unless you lose. You'd just have to make a rule that Alaska and Anchorage could never host unless they were playing each other. I know that sucks for them if the have a good year, but they should be thankful that the WCHA even kept them.
