As the regular season in both men’s and women’s college soccer enters its home stretch, the jockeying for position in the postseason NCAA tournament fields always becomes more intense.

The apportioning of at-large berths in relation to automatic conference bids is always a sticky question. The trend to grant traditionally larger conference heavier shares of the prize will likely continue, even if the results on soccer fields across the nation indicate that some evening out may be in order.

While the RPI and conference tournaments end up playing a huge role in determining who eventually is invited to the dance, we can look at our current TopDrawerSoccer.com Tournament Rankings to get an idea of some of the tension involved in the selection process, first with the men and then with the women.

Men’s Tournament Ranking Breakdown by Conference

ACC - 7 Big East - 7 Big 10 - 5 Pac 10 - 3 Conference USA -3 Ivy League - 3 CAA - 2 WCC - 2 Big West - 2 Missouri Valley - 2 Atlantic 10 - 1

MPSF - 1 Summit - 1 MAC -1 Horizon - 1 Big South - 1 Northeast - 1 Patriot 1 Southern - 1 America East - 1 Metro Atlantic - 1 Atlantic Sun - 1

The ACC and the Big East have been top dogs when it comes to tournament berths of late, and there’s no reason to think it won’t happen again. It could be six or eight teams from each, but seven seems a safe number from here. The Big 10 currently places five in our ranking, and this may be one too high depending on how teams finish the season, but certainly there is enough quality in the Midwest this year for five teams to be placed from here.

For the Pac 10, placing three out of six teams is a good showing, but it’s not out of the question to think that four could make it in, depending again on who finishes with a flourish (and with the parity in men’s college soccer these, days, it’s hard for anyone to flourish over a 3-5 match period).

It’s here where things begin to get dicey. Conference USA, the Colonial Athletic Association and the Ivy League would be called “mid-majors” in basketball parlance, yet these leagues produce some very good college soccer. The CAA in particular has seven teams with legitimate post-season aspirations. Similarly the Atlantic 10 has a team on the outside in Dayton, while the MVC has both Creighton and Evansville who figure to be in the mix when berths are discussed.

Just about every smaller conference has at least one additional team that is strongly contending for a spot in the field, such as Hartwick in the MAC, Quinnipiac in the Northeast and Davidson in the Southern. I am reminded how much post-season conference tournaments work against these leagues and really do not understand what the benefit of having them is (I’ve been to some of these and it’s definitely not bringing in any revenue). They only serve to increase the chance a league won’t send their best representative to the NCAA, or even to deny said conference its already-small chance of placing two teams.

Perhaps it’s time to consider expanding the men’s field to 64 teams.

Which is what the women have. While this brings some relief to the pressure of getting under the wire, there are still some tough calls out there.

Women’s Tournament Ranking Breakdown by Conference

ACC - 7 Big East - 7 Big 12 - 6 SEC - 5 Big 10 - 5 PAC 10 - 6 WCC - 3 CUSA - 3 Atlantic 10 - 2 CAA - 1

Atlantic Sun - 1 America East - 1 Big Sky - 1 Big South - 1 Big West - 1 Horizon - 1 Ivy - 1 Metro Atlantic - 1 MAC - 1 Missouri Valley - 1

Mountain West - 1 Northeast - 1 Ohio Valley - 1 Patriot - 1 Southern - 1 Southland - 1 SWAC - 1 Summit - 1 Sun Belt - 1 WAC - 1

Similar to the men’s side, there are a lot of conferences that could make a case to have more teams representing them in the NCAA Tournament. The battles for the final spots in some of those larger conferences, such as the Big East, ACC and Big 10, will also become pretty intense in the next week or two.