The conference re-draft has slowed down over this weekend, mainly because we are that guy at the end of your fantasy draft who keeps forgetting it is his turn to pick. Yes, we'll get off the phone in just a second. Is it my turn? Oops.
Actually, it's becoming harder to make picks now not because the obvious teams are off the board, but because our conference is getting bigger and there are more bloggers bickering over who to pick. Every time we make a selection, we invite another blogger into the war room, and shockingly, a bunch of writers don't agree on things.
Here's the conferences so far:
1. The 12 Pack: Washington (Texas, Georgia, UCLA, Wisconsin)
2. Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants: Auburn (Florida, Penn State, Virginia Tech, Miami-FL)
3. TSK: Arizona (Alabama, Oklahoma, Nebraska, Texas A&M)
4. Conference TMZ: West Virginia (Ohio State, Florida State, Louisville,Michigan State)
5. House of a Thousand Sanctions: Syracuse (USC, Notre Dame, Oregon,Tennessee)
6. Cult of Les Miles: Arkansas (LSU, Michigan, UNC,Stanford)
Our draft strategy has been a bit of an accident. Picking 6th in a serpentine draft meant that our 3rd round pick would be the 18th overall selection. If everybody picked the optimal football program according to CFB Data Warehouse's all-time program rankings, we'd end up with Pittsburgh. I'd point out that Pitt hasn't even been selected yet.
The point here is that at our position, we weren't going to be able to draft three football powers. We were virtually guaranteed to get a flawed football program. A school that, by definition, is not a perennial top 20 team.
So, instead, we decided to draft a different sort of conference. Instead of fighting the losing battle of trying to keep up with, say, TSK's football first conference -- we carved out our own niche. Football is still important, but we decided to build the best all-around athletics conference possible.
Now, five picks in, all five of our schools are in the top ten all-time in total national titles. Five of ten. Stanford has won every single Director's Cup except one... which was won by North Carolina. The Cult of Les Miles believes in total sports dominance. Team TSK is a better football conference, but schools like Oklahoma and Nebraska don't bring a whole lot outside of football. It's just a different sort of conference. We've apparently rebuilt, philosophically, the Pac-10.
Also, what I truly like about our conference is that we are well-rounded in almost every way. We've got complete geographical reach in our first four picks (west coast, east coast, north, and south). Michigan is a "public Ivy" and Stanford is one of the finest schools in the country. LSU is a powerful ag school, and one of the national leaders in engineering. We're a conference that does it all.
Which brings us to our current pick.
Given our philosophy, there is but one mantra: be good at everything. The question is, do we need another football school who can at least hold their own in other sports (this would be Iowa -- and we would dominate wrestling!). Or do we get another school that will compete for second in the Director's Cup (Cal -- with a bonus rivalry with Stanford!). Or do we take something else entirely?