Due to the holiday break, which I used to fall into a crabcake induced coma, the Conference Re-Draft slowed down considerably. But things are back up and running, and here are the Seventh Round results:
The 12 Pack: Clemson (Texas, Georgia, UCLA, Wisconsin, Washington, Duke)
Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants: Illinois (Florida, Penn State, Virginia Tech, Miami-FL, Auburn, Kansas)
The Empire: UConn (Alabama, Oklahoma, Nebraska, Texas A&M, Arizona, Cal)
Conference TMZ: Missouri (Ohio State, Florida State, Louisville, Michigan State, West Virginia, Maryland)
House of a Thousand Sanctions: Pittsburgh (USC, Notre Dame, Oregon, Tennessee, Syracuse, Kentucky)
Cult of Les Miles: Oklahoma State (LSU, Michigan, UNC, Stanford, Arkansas, Iowa)
Left on the board:
ACC (5) -- Boston College, Georgia Tech, N.C. State, Virginia, Wake Forest
Big 12 (4) -- Baylor, Iowa State, Kansas State, Texas Tech
Big East (4) -- Cincinnati, Rutgers, South Florida, TCU
Big Ten (4) -- Indiana, Minnesota, Northwestern, Purdue
Pac 12 (5) -- Arizona State, Colorado, Oregon State, Utah, Washington State
SEC (4) -- Ole Miss, Mississippi State, South Carolina*, Vanderbilt
Notable Non-AQs -- Army, BYU, Boise State, East Carolina, Memphis, Navy
*We promptly took the Gamecocks to kick off the eighth round. Welcome aboard, Cocks!
It's funny, you can see each conference's strategy and each conference slightly resembles one of our current conferences. The 12 Pack has, largely, strong academic schools with good football tradition, but it looks like it will be dominated by one team right now. They've created the Big 10 with Texas instead of Ohio St. The Sisterhood has good depth, but most of its schools have question marks (Miami's facilities, VT's location, Kansas' cursed existence). Welcome to being the new ACC, the conference that will seemingly never live up to its potential. The Empire went for the social stratification have the massive haves and then relative have nots. That worked well for the Big 12.
Conference TMZ has formed the most bad ass basketball conference on the planet. Which is fitting for Big East bloggers. Everyone thinks the SEC is just a bunch of cheaters, and House of Thousand Sanctions has jumped into the deep end of that pool. And I commend them for it.
The Cult of Les Miles has formed the new Pac-10. We will absolutely dominate the non-revenue sports and rack up titles. There are 14 FBS programs which have won at least 25 team national titles in all combined sports. We have seven of them. South Carolina is the first team we selected that has not won at least 25 national titles (only 17 to go, guys!), but we think they are a bit of a sleeping giant. If there is one overriding theme in our conference, it is this: Be Well-Rounded.
I think a lot of this has been dictated by draft position, but I do like that we've found a niche. I don't know who has the strongest conference, but I do like seeing the different philosophies in creating a conference. So, how are we doing? Who do we take next?