Fixin the Womens D-III NCAA Tournament

[SLPPUCKSTER]

I'm tired of patching the Good Ol' Boys Format Created by the NCAA for their National Tournament.
Lets take a page from March Maddness Mens Basketball and have a single elimination Tournament with enough participants to ensure that anyone worthy of being included is included. With 39 member teams it seems a 16 team tournament might be right. This would involve four regional Mini-Tournaments. They Could be split East and West with a neutral middle site from Chicago to Cleveland included to handle crossover between East and West. I'm sure most teams would be willing to spent 3 more hours on the bus for a chance to play in the Frozen Four. Alternating Frozen Four Sites between East and West would provide a more fair and attractive format. Host teams have almost always won and in talking to Elmira parents they would like an trip once in a while to accompany the tournament experience. However, it might mean that one of the Good Ol' boys might get beaten by some upstart team and they wouldn't have twice as good a chance of making the tournament through a back door with the ice slanted in their favor when they get there.
I'd like to hear ideas for a financially feasable but fair Tourney!!!:)

[dave1381]

Every single tournament in any sport would love to have more teams, just isn't going to happen. Most tournament particpants / total particpant ratios are in the 20-30% range except w. hockey and w. water polo which are both more like 13%. basketball / women's soccer / tennis / etc. can have 64 D-I teams in their tourneys because there are 300 schools playing the sport at the D-I level. D-III won't get a 16 team tournament until their numbers get into the 60s, at least.

[nut_case]

I too wish that there could be a few more spots for deserving teams. Although the NCAA supposedly follows a formula in determining how many teams will participate, I am quite sure that it does not apply to all sports. See, for example, the very unfortunate limitations which apply in the case of the NCAA D-3 women's lacrosse tournament, which allows only 19 or so of approximately 140 teams to qualify. Even more absurd is the fact that there are only a small handful of truly at-large bids. As a result, it is easily possible that a team in the top 10 or 15 in the polls can be kept out of the tournament.