Inside College Hockey | NCAA vote preserves auto-bids

April 18, 2003
NCAA vote preserves auto-bids

The NCAA Management Council has approved a "grandfather" clause that will preserve automatic NCAA Tournament berths for College Hockey America and the Western Collegiate Hockey Association. The bids were in jeopardy under a rule set to take effect in September (see related stories), but the NCAA Championships and Competition Cabinet proposed this grandfather clause in February.

The Management Council's vote took place during its meeting earlier this week, April 14-15, and the measure passed easily. Forty-five members of the Management Council voted for the grandfather clause, with four against it (one abstained and one was not present).

The rule in question requires conferences to have no fewer than six full-time Division I members – schools where every sport is Division I – in order to receive auto-bids for NCAA championships in any sport. Furthermore, each of those schools must have maintained Division I status for at least six years. Since the CHA and WCHA have fewer than six

In addition to the CHA and WCHA, the Atlantic Soccer Conference (men's soccer) and the Midwestern Collegiate Volleyball Association (men's volleyball) would also have been affected.