BYU wasn't an independent, right? How many independent hoops teams are let in their tourney? NCAA should just mandate that *EVERY* member school should be in a conference for all recognised sports. It doesn't have to be the same one (eg I think VT wrestled in a non-BE conf back in the day because they didn't have enough schools) but you have to be somewhere with someone.

Quote Originally Posted by nova1111 View Post
Those kinds of compromises are fine. Just don't freeze out a quality team that's obviously better, by any measure we have available for national comparisons, than some or even all of the teams that are playing.

Remember, there still are independent teams. That hasn't been brought up often enough. If Notre Dame or BYU has a dynamite year and ranks in the top four nationally in every poll, we're going to tell their presidents, trustees (and alumni and fans), "To effing bad. You might think you have the authority to keep your school independent, but we are hereby going to penalize you for exercising your lawful authority. We dont care if you are members of the NCAA, you're frozen out of the national championship, and the rest of us going to grab the prestige and money."

Frankly, our lawyers might have a loser there, friend.