jhawkmvp
2nd String
Posts: 443
Joined: Dec 2013
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I Root For: Kansas
Location: Over the Rainbow
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RE: Ideal Conference Draft - 2014
(03-19-2014 07:33 PM)ncbeta Wrote: (03-19-2014 05:27 PM)Wedge Wrote: (03-19-2014 11:33 AM)bigblueblindness Wrote: (03-19-2014 11:21 AM)10thMountain Wrote: I will say, BBB and Wedge both put together very consistent leagues which is hard to do.
The BBB western league has a large but still geographically cohesive footprint.
Wedge has , with the exception of NWU, a league that is pretty coherently a North/South east coast league.
Wedge has a pretty darn good ACC.
I was late to the party on Oregon State. As everyone says, I was ready to pick them next before Zombiewoof took them. Since I was trying to take over the west, I really couldn't trade any of my teams to get an Oregon school without losing another major piece. I knew that I would have a hard time getting all of Texas, UCLA, Washington, and Oregon. Among those, I felt that Oregon State was the most undervalued potential replacement for one of those 4 schools. Oregon State actually has better academics that Oregon, and they are one Phil Knight or T. Boone Pickens away from being whatever they decide to be. I really thought I had a good chance at Oregon State with the 62nd pick, but Zombie took them at 59. If that pick would have landed, I would be ecstatic. However, I did not feel good about taking either Colorado or Utah one round earlier than I did, and their availability along with BYU's immediate pick after my Utah selection made me feel good about their valuations.
Anyway, I almost pulled it off, but that is for horseshoes and hand grenades, as they say. My ultimate plan was for Texas, UCLA, Washington, California, Arizona, Colorado, Utah, Oregon State, New Mexico, Hawaii, Nevada, and Idaho. If we were going to 14, I would have taken Wyoming and petitioned for Montana. What can I say... I like maps.
BBB, you ran into the same issues that I did the first time we did one of these drafts. There are only so many quality programs to add in the west, and it gets more difficult when one or two other drafters poach a few teams in the west for themselves.
My league worked out in this draft because, for whatever reason, it looks like everyone else who wanted southern teams pretty much decided to start looking elsewhere after the early run on SEC teams. I was able to get good value by taking Clemson, VT, Syracuse, and GT in the rounds that I did, and didn't have to expand the geographical reach until we got to the point where the remaining options were very thin.
Another thing we can see after doing two of these is that major trades are difficult to make. Changing strategy in mid-draft and trying to make trades to "correct" into a second strategy might not work. Taking a big-name team early to use as trade bait also seems risky. I almost took Nebraska (instead of Clemson) to use as trade bait in this draft, but decided against it because I couldn't see anyone giving me a team of equal value that fit into what I was trying to do; IOW I thought that it was unlikely I could trade Nebraska for a team more valuable than Clemson, so I just took Clemson with that pick.
An FCS draft sounds interesting, though it would be difficult to do with 8 or 9 people drafting because FCS is not very deep with quality football programs and it's more limited regionally.
All but 1 of your schools is named after the state (as in non-directional), a state flagship or named after the city that it's located in (but each of those city schools are highly visible athletic programs). NW has an 8 Billion dollar endowment. There's no doubt in my mind that if your conference actually existed, both UMass and Buffalo would have huge fanbases. 'Cuse and Buffalo would compliment each other as in-state rivals. If these conferences were set today I'd bet that in 50 years this one would be killer. BBB is like the mirror of the west. I'm eastern biased though so I'd have to give it to Wedge. If Idaho sat in a huge metro like Umass I would think a little differently.
My conference on the other hand, is interesting. If they were all set today and each conference had a meeting of ADs, commissioners and presidents all of mine would be in the same room looking at each other confused like "um, what do we do now?" However I think I've provided the "smaller" schools with a close enough partner to have a rivalry which energizes the fan bases, as well as some heavy hitters which would really bring people out.
One interesting thing I tried to look at that I believe hasn't been mentioned in these drafts is the CLC rankings. In my own mind, the more apparel and gear that's sold, the more fans are likely to support the team...in a new conference? Who knows.. that's why I also tried to go for some big endowments and academic schools. I think I ended up with a pretty average conference because I took some top and bottom programs in almost every aspect.
Trades were hard to do there were some interesting talks, but to pull it off almost all would require multiple trading partners and that is difficult to make work out fairly.
Well I picked last in the first round and so I had a choice: fight for schools in the east or go west. I decided I wanted a hybrid PAC/B12 type conference that almost came about in 2010 because I figured the west would have less people picking schools there and for the first 7 rounds or so it was mostly just me and BBB picking there. My goal was to be contiguous, but Zombie took ASU 2 picks before I was going to take them so I threw that out since Phog had taken BYU a few picks earlier and I did not like any of the secondary schools in Utah or Arizona and it was too early for New Mexico/CSU/AFA.
Pretty happy with my conference, actually, besides the contiguous part. Easy east/west split. USC, Oklahoma and Oregon in FB, Kansas in BB, USC has 2 times more baseball championships than any other school, and Minnesota is a top power in hockey. Texas and California recruiting grounds. Five of the top 20 AD revenue schools. PST/CST slots so I can have games on TV all day on Saturdays. And Vegas is mine!
(This post was last modified: 03-19-2014 11:41 PM by jhawkmvp.)
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