Introducing the SB Nation Conference Re-draft project

Hi all, I hope all is going well out there in UConn land. As you know the baseball team fell to South Carolina last week after a valiant effort and what may have been the best season in UConn baseball history, officially brining UConn's "Year of HAM"© to a close. We won't have any open threads until Sept. 1 when the football team ritually sacrifices Fordham, that does not mean we are going away though. We'll still be here throughout the summer covering Jim Calhoun's future, Kemba's NBA draft, any recruiting news and of course previewing football and debating if the Paul Pasqualoni-era means UConn football should return to the the Yankee Conference.

However, in addition to all of that, SB Nation's college network has put together a Conference Re-Draft project to keep us all amused throughout the summer. The idea is a simple one: what if we blew up the existing conference structure and organized schools like they were in some sort of massive all-sports pick-up game. There are six conference commissioners and they will draft based on things like historical success, athletic might, value, market, academics and just about anything else they want to. The one thing that won't be explicitly considered is location (so UConn and USC could wind up in the same conference), though it can be a factor since things like rivalries do play in.

Beyond those broad restrictions each commissioner is free to do as they please. If they want to make a lean, 9-team Southern football conference that's fine. So is making a mammoth 20-team basketball-focused league (but who would ever think that was a good idea?). When a school is drafted, the blog for that school joins its new conference and the readers and authors get a say in future draft picks. The first set of picks will be revealed Monday and it will be continually updated throughout the summer. After the first two rounds the three schools will create a name and general template for each conference going forward.

Here are your commissioners and the draft order:

Round-Pick Conference
1-1 BC Interruption 
1-2 Black Heart Gold Pants
1-3 Team Speed Kills
1-4 Big East Coast Bias
1-5 House of Sparky
1-6 Red Cup Rebellion
2-7 Red Cup Rebellion
2-8 House of Sparky
2-9 Big East Coast Bias
2-10 Team Speed Kills
2-11 Black Heart Gold Pants
2-12 BC Interruption

The more involvement we have network-wide the better the project will be, so please do chime in in the comments.

Thanks for being with us this year, it was an incredible run for UConn, and an incredible year for the site. We appreciate your support.