Let me start off by saying I know nothing about how you guys run these tournaments, so this is purely an idea that maybe you all could expand upon.

Kev's D3 Tournament of Future Champions got me thinking... what if we had a Tournament of CHAMPIONS.  Take the last however many national title winners that are still at their respective schools (right now there are 9 if I counted right) and have some sort of Tournament of Champions with them.

Right now the teams would be...

Beloit (xulapaul)
Wisconsin, La Crosse (danpilgrim1)
Rensselaer Poly (killbatman)
Elmhurst (ggallagh)
Rose-Hulman Tech (jack_duck)
Hamline (ike1024)
Washington MO (itest)
St. Norbert (dirtyjerk)
Maranatha Baptist Bible (norm24)

Any ideas on how this could work? 

I like the idea, though I of course would not be able to participate. Hopefully someday! 

As for how it could work...you probably would have to do something similar to kev's tournament. Each team plays each other once, so if 9 teams are involved, that means 8 games. That might be a bit ambitious, however, and I don't see most being willing or able to commit to that many games. Maybe 4-5 games instead?

Yeah, I don't feel like going 1-9 in my non-con. But I would definitely be involved if we limited the number of games.

Sounds fun, but I would only want to play 2-3 games.  Even though we are down as a conference this season, getting 14 wins can be a challenge in a tough conference if you don't win 6-10 non-con.

Dan - Here's an idea....why don't you organize something with a few other elite programs that aren't in the big 4 or aren't already in challenges.  Just looking through the world you could include: Gettysburg, Ohio Wesleyan, Pacific, CMHMS, Trinity, Plymouth St., Fisk, & Dickinson to name a few.  Could be a sort of bracket buster tourney for those teams.

I'm up for something like this.  We play most of those guys most season's anyway.  But Norm's idea is a good one too.

... we could expand on my tournament and place the top 6 teams as THE CHAMPIONS.  My goal with the Future Champions Tournament was to take the top point earners and rank the Tournaments....(instead of Tournament A, B, C they would be ELITES, CONTENDERS, ROOKIES...something like that)  right now we have 13 participants.  And we could probably easily get 5 more.  The problem is most of the ELITE programs are in ELITE conferences view non-conference as prep for their true conference challenge.  If you want to piggy back on Future Champions Tournament or if you want me to piggy back off you, both would be cool.  I'm really just trying to create extra excitement and build my team up to respectable stature.

If you do two of the games on the exhibition days, you can play more teams.  The only thing is..you have to get the first game scheduled before you challenge for the 2nd game. Otherwise, WIS may put them in the wrong slot

I used to run an 8-team tournament like that.  There were two 4-team brackets on the exhibition days. On the 2nd exhibtion day, the winners played each other for the bracket championship. Likewise, the losers played.
During the regular season, you played each of the 4 teams in the opposite bracket. Whenever the two bracket winners met, that was for the championship.

Posted by alblack56 on 3/12/2013 1:06:00 PM (view original):
If you do two of the games on the exhibition days, you can play more teams.  The only thing is..you have to get the first game scheduled before you challenge for the 2nd game. Otherwise, WIS may put them in the wrong slot

I used to run an 8-team tournament like that.  There were two 4-team brackets on the exhibition days. On the 2nd exhibtion day, the winners played each other for the bracket championship. Likewise, the losers played.
During the regular season, you played each of the 4 teams in the opposite bracket. Whenever the two bracket winners met, that was for the championship.

I really like this idea alblack.  I need to make sure we get a solid group going and then I will push for using the ex-games in the tournament.