  We show that the effect of the top quark can dominate over the effect of the
gauge sector in determining the vacuum alignment in little higgs (LH) models.
We demonstrate that in the littlest LH model and the SU(2)xSU(2)xU(1) LH model,
ensuring that the correct vacuum alignment is chosen requires that a subset of
the gauge sector couplings be large to overcome the effect of the top quark. We
quantify this effect by deriving bounds on the couplings in the gauge sector
and demonstrate that these bounds provide a compelling theoretical reason for
the gauge coupling constant hierarchy in the SU(2)xSU(2)xU(1) model that
reduces the Goldstone decay constant scale to a TeV. We also argue that for a
class of LH models with T parity the top quark drives the correct vacuum
alignment and therefore all gauge couplings can be small.
