Elephant in the Room: The real reason Portland was sent to C

While I certainly understand the fact that Portland's on-field performance and school ticket sales are are at the pinnacle of the sport, I'm astonished that so many forum posters largely ignored the single largest reason why the Pilots were sent to Colorado instead of hosting:

The bottom line is this - Women's Soccer is not only a non-revenue generating sport, the NCAA tournament is a MONEY LOSING TOURNAMENT. Only a handful of NCAA tournaments actually generate a profit for the NCAA - Men's basketball, hockey, baseball and lacrosse. All the rest cost more to stage than they take in at the gate.

With 64 teams in, and only a handful (and I'm being generous with the term handful) of teams in the sport that generate any actual gate revenues, the soccer tournament is a money loser before ANY of the 64 teams are selected. That's why only 6-8 teams are allowed to fly to tourney sites every year, and that ostensibly puts the committee in a situation where "regionalization" takes the priority it does.

Even if Portland was chosen to host and made $100,000 for the NCAA by hosting, the tourney still loses money OVERALL. And without more NCAA caliber teams within 350 miles of Portland, the regionalization rules act as a straightjacket that basically forces the committee to send them to Colorado.

This puts the women's soccer tourney in a chicken and egg situation. Until the women's soccer tournament has at least 20-30 schools that generate gate revenues (like Portland does), or goes to a regional hub concept that is able to generate positive revenues that puts the tourney into the black, the sport will continue to have little clout at the larger NCAA table, and good teams will continue to get stuck in bad situations.

Nah... I think most everyone on here knows that it doesn't generate money.

Basically, your argument falls flat because regardless of whether or not the tournament itself is profitable, hosting at the University of Portland IS profitable. This makes the NCAA's stance of forcing UP to travel in order to save money a total crock.

I mean... if I were the NCAA, would I rather lose $200,000 hosting the tournament or $150,000? Um... I'll take option 2, please. But the NCAA, by denying Portland the right to host, is willfully choosing option 1. Makes no sense.

I understand that for MOST schools in UP's situation, shipping them off does indeed save money for the NCAA. I don't think anyone will argue that. HOWEVER, UP is a special case and has gobs of demonstrable evidence to prove it.

I don't think anyone here wants to demand that all higher seeds host all the way through and to ignore regionalization in making the bracket. Yes, that would be ideal but it's not practicable. But in a case like this, where it's so clear to anyone who takes one second and looks at it that hosting at UP would actually make the NCAA money, I think we would all like the NCAA to be able to consider other factors (like attendance and ticket sales) when choosing which school will host.

That's all we want. Yes, wholesale changes would be great, but as for now... all I want is for them to be able to have at least the option of allowing Portland to host even if no other school within 350 miles qualifies.

It wouldn't take 20-30 schools making money for the NCAA to change it's mind. All it would take is 6 ACC schools.

The truth of the matter is that one BCS conference has the clout to push through the changes. It could be done next season if the voting members of the ACC wanted it done.

BCS rant over...