could go. if that were to merge with something coming out of the house, potentially it could go further to the right because that s where they re coming from, which would make it possibly unacceptable to democrats. i want to handle that question in a little bit, about how far democrats and supporters can go to compromise more. we don t compromise anymore. it s going to go to the right. you want a bill out of the house, that s the similar. it s a republican house and you have an overwhelming vote in the senate. both sides have to get out of their comfort zone if this thing is going to work. what do you think when the real stumbling block when it comes to republicans in the house is sit znship. realististly you will not get citizenship out of the house. many are afraid you ll get it coming out of conference and they don t want to vote on that. majority of the republican conference is not ready to vote for that. some members fear that which is why they don t want it to go to
the only problem, neither team playing had any business being there. central florida s record was a feeble 10 wins, 18 losses. finished near the bottom of the regular season stanldings. mercy, their opponent finished just a game ahead of central florida in the standings. ordinarily neither team would have made it to the conference championship, and to the brink of the ncaa tournament. but in 1996 a couple of accidents happened. the best team in the league was ineligible to play in the tournament, that was one, and also the other top team suffered fluke losses in the first round. basically, the bracket in the tournament collapsed and left two cellar dwellers to play for the championship. neither one deserved to be there but one was going to win and then go on to represent the conference on the national stage in the ncaa tournament. it was a very ugly game. central florida was bad. mercer was worse. 12 minutes into the game the score was 23-0, central florida went on to win it. that put
consider them. let s talk about the path way to citizenship, the pathway to get something through congress. the simplest way is you take a bill, put it on the floor, they pass it, it s done. that s not going to happen. we ve been talking about this, the conference committee. if the house passes something different or if the house passes a series of broken up bills, the piecemeal approach, one deals with border security, one deals with kids or something, a series goes through the house that could be merged with the senate in the conference and then each of the the packages would have to get a vote in the senate, a vote in the house and maybe it could work that way. brian, could you walk us through what s involved in this process? sort of practically speaking what the pitfalls are of relying on that. the single biggest pitfall is you have certain republicans who don t want to get to congress. when you break up the bill, you have some consensus issues. there s a question of whether
kroeldz the floor of the house with the rare exception of when the minority or anybody, really, introduces a discharge petition to put a piece of legislation on the floor. all they need is 218 signatures on the petition to get there. it doesn t happen very often. it happens even less often for big legislation like immigration reform. but when but if it s a choice between republicans in the house being saddled with blame for killing the whole process, you might see maybe not enough to get it on the floor but 10, 20 republicans break with the leadership. i ask, when has this been used on something big, mccain/feingold in 2002. you talk about the petitions were circulated. shamz me. you had the same kind of polarization in the conference at that point. vast majority of our members were against it. you had a handful of members, particularly from urban areas
the t.a.c. the central florida golden knights against the mercer bears. the t.a.c. was a small basketball conference a bunch of schools you ve never heard of, they never get on tv, they play in tiny gyms that fit like 500 people. the beautiful thing about college basketball is that it is the most democratic with a small d, big time sports. more than 300 teams play it and every single one of them from mighty duke and kentucky to no-names like texas pan america and southern utah, you they have the same opportunity. you win the conference, you play the ncaa tournament. you win the ncaa and claim national title. every time, no matter how big or small has the same theoretical chance to win it all. what happened in march 1986, the championship game of the tvment t.a.c. conference tournament. the winner would get the automatic bid to the ncaa tournament. espn was there.