Talk:Defending the Kingdom/@comment-101878-20060323112814

While your proposal for a "Defending the Kingdom" bid may happen to make sense in this case, it&quot;s an extremely flawed general solution. What if this year&quot;s UNC basketball team (which lost 7 players, mind you) had gone 0-30 and didn&quot;t win their conference tournament? They still deserve to be in the Big Dance? Would you even try to tell me that this year&quot;s UNC team was the one which won last year? I seem to remember Raymond Felton, Sean May, Sean McCants, et al. being on that team.

Did USC deserve an automatic spot in this year&quot;s Rose Bowl? Do my Texas Longhorns deserve an automatic spot in next year&quot;s Fiesta Bowl? If not, why is football different?

It&quot;s unfortunate that a team ranked #11 will not be included in its sport&quot;s championship playoff, but they did not have a sufficiently impressive season within the rules which govern their playoff. They neither won their conference tournament nor were considered one of the ten best teams not to win a conference tournament. You could certainly argue their worth of being in the tournament, but the fact remains that, in college hockey, #11 is a bubble team. Sometimes they&quot;ll get in, sometimes they won&quot;t, but just because they won last year doesn&quot;t mean they deserve it any more than any other team.