Bob Highfill's take -- The Tiger's Den

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Date Posted: 09:21:41 05/14/02 Tue
Author: Jon Ralston
Subject: Bob Highfill's take
In reply to: Jon Ralston 's message, "Tigers in tough bracket" on 07:57:43 05/13/02 Mon

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Originally Published Tuesday, May 14, 2002
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Pacific gets raw deal from NCAA

Bob Highfill

Congratulations, University of the Pacific softball. After another outstanding regular season, you get to play in the toughest regional in the country.

Thanks a lot, NCAA.

You put five teams currently ranked among the top 17 into one regional, including Pacific. The other seven regionals don't come close in terms of competitive balance. It hardly seems fair. But why should that come as a surprise. Fairness is not a trademark quality of the NCAA.

But this situation truly is a farce. Plenty of coaches and fans have worn spots atop their heads from all the scratching.

Pacific is reaching for Rogaine.

The No. 17 Tigers (42-15) finished second by one game in the Big West and played one of the toughest non-conference schedules in the nation. They were

awarded the region's fifth seed and will play No. 8 ranked Stanford (43-18) on Thursday in Fresno. In the same regional are No. 5 Cal (48-19), No. 9 Cal State Fullerton (50-11), No. 14 Fresno State (49-18) and unranked Evansville (34-25).

It's the only regional with five teams that are or were ranked in the top 10 at some point. No other regional has more than two teams currently ranked in the top 17, and only two have three schools in the top 20. It's the only regional with three former national champions and five schools with College World Series pedigree.

Only one team is going to advance from this group and that's unfortunate.

What was the NCAA thinking? The RAND Corporation would struggle with that one.

The NCAA says it wants to reduce travel in light of Sept. 11, but its execution is flawed.

The eight top seeds are travelling -- some farther than others. UCLA, the top-ranked team in the country, is headed to South Carolina. Washington is being shipped to Michigan. Arizona is on its way to Minnesota, along with Princeton (New Jersey), Penn State and Boston University. The Oklahoma regional includes Army from West Point, N.Y. Evansville (Ind.) has a tough trip ahead of it.

Obviously, the NCAA cares about the money. Grouping teams geographically cuts costs at the expense of equity, which should be the NCAA's top priority. After all, who is it supposed to serve?

The fair thing to do is balance the regionals. If that means sending a California school east to make a regional more competitive, do it. It's been done before and schools are travelling far and wide this season anyway. Just make it fair.

Tigers coach Brian Kolze has taken the high road, saying his team is excited to be in the postseason. He believes his group has a great opportunity ahead. Deep down, though, he has to be disappointed about how his and other teams are being treated. His ambitious scheduling, the building block of his program, didn't mean a hill of beans to a bunch of bureaucrats, who also hid behind the Sept. 11 tragedy this winter when they shipped Pacific's women's volleyball team to Louisville for the first two rounds of the NCAA Tournament.

There isn't much Pacific can do. Its hands are tied. Athletic director Lynn King will write a letter outlining his concerns, similar to the one he wrote in December. It probably will end up in someone's circular file, along with others from frustrated ADs across the country.

Since the NCAA restructured in the mid-1990s, mid-major institutions, like Pacific, have been squeezed out of critical decision-making processes. The NCAA continues to insulate itself from its constituents, with too many committee meetings and not enough discussions at the grass-roots level. The power has shifted to conference commissioners, who seem have considerable pull in the Midwest and on the East Coast.

The Tigers aren't making excuses. They know who they're up against and what they have to do. It would have been nice not to play four other schools with a shot at winning the national championship in the regionals, especially when the other regionals don't measure up.

* Highfill covers college sports for The Record. Mail: P.O. Box 900, Stockton, CA 95201; Phone: 546-829; Fax: 547-8187; E-mail: bhighfil@recordnet.com.

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