November 08, 2005

University of Portland fans were frothing with excitement over the playoffs because it was a given that UP would play in Portland. That's one of the advantages of being a top seed in the playoffs, homefield advantage. It's a reward teams earn and, consindering that UP is the only undefeated team in NCAA women's soccer and the #1 ranked team in the nation, they more than earned homefield advantage.

So imagine everyone's shock and anger yesterday when the schedule for the first rounds of the playoffs. UP was not given homefield advantage. UP will play the first two rounds on the road in Nebraska. And to make this all the more infuriating, out of the four top seeds in the playoffs, UP's the only one that was denied homefield advantage. The other top seeds will play at home, but unbeaten #1 ranked UP is being shipped off to the corn fields.

The NCAA's explanation for the injustice? They're trying to minimize travel costs for preliminary round games, so they grouped UP with the University of Nebraska, Iowa State, and Creighton for the first rounds, since those 3 schools are within driving distance of each other. That way, fewer teams have to fly, so it costs schools less. Unless, of course, you're the team who has to fly. It doesn't save UP money, just robs them of an advantage they earned.

So UP was denied home advantage and has to go to Nebraska in order to save other teams money. Yeah, great way to handle the playoffs. And it's tempting to ask what the hell UP did to deserve getting screwed over, when the other top seeds were given home advantage, but the answer is simple. Since doing the playoffs this was is unorthodox and unfair, it has the potential to cause major problems if a top seed that was supposed to have homefield advantage loses on the road, so in chosing which top seed has to travel, the NCAA picked the team least likely to lose. UP.

Argh. Who knew there were such harsh consequences for having a winning record? But, while this is infuriating, it does have an interesting twist. This has happened before. In 2002, UP was a top seed in the playoffs, but were denied homefield advantage. And that is the year UP won the national championship. Try all you want, NCAA, but you can't keep a good team down. Even if you send them to Nebraska.

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