Conference Realignment Auction: Previewing our Madness

There's been a lot of talk across the country swirling around conference realignment. Somebody should jump ship to Conference Y, Soandso should drop down to FCS, what has to happen for Whatsitsface to take advantage of somebody else's more privileged television contracts? It's all just a bunch of hoo-ha, and the comments sections are usually filled with people crossing their arms and howling at the sky, "UGGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH."

Let's have some fun instead, okay?

Over the next week and a half, we're going to be rolling out our individual results for this behind-the-scenes project. It's something that a few of us have been toying with this for a while and we're happy to finally get this thing all completed.

For starters, it was an auction. Ten bloggers from Hustle Belt would assume the role of a conference commissioner. No Big Ten, no SEC, no FCS; everything is from scratch and we tried to inherit as many schools as we possibly could to come to a final map of 10 new conferences. In fewer words, here's how the procedure went:

1. Everybody had an equal amount of bidding money to work with for the auction process.
2. Minimum eight schools, maximum 16.
3. Everybody drafts a school from the [real-life] MAC to start. This is the only school obtained for free.
4. Everybody auctions off teams. Everybody is allowed up to two nominations (Alabama Crimson Tide & LSU Tigers) with an initial bid.
5. Anybody who wants the team and has the means to do so, may up the ante on schools. After 24 hours of a school's last bid has been placed, the school auction for that school is closed, and whomever nominated that school may nominate a new one.
6. We had a pair of trade periods, midway through and at the end. Anybody who wanted to trade away schools and bidding money were able to do so.

There wasn't really an aim to try to paint some sort of conclusion of how we view the importance of conferences, we were just horsing around.

via Google Maps

So please, fire away with all of the hot takes as we go along. Try to be the judge of "who wins" this thing for us.