Yankee151
Hot Girl Summer
This will be entirely AVID-based, otherwise I'd never update it. Thanks to bruin, bruin, wolfman, and dawg for inspo.
Also I hate AVID's UI so much and will probably complain about it here as well
Anyways, the premise here is a little different. I always end up doing weird things with my conferences so the same 4 teams don't end up in BCS bowls (spoiler alert: I did it wrong and the same 4 teams will end up in the MNC here) to mixed results. So I'm trying a new method: Splitting up teams entirely geographically!
This is an almost correct map of the teams available in NCAA14. Charlotte is the big one missing (and for shame, they would've made things a bit easier), and UAB still exists in this timeline. Thanks to EA, every conference has to have a minimum so two teams (Idaho, So. Alabama) had to go in the Independents bin. Some outright huge rivalries were split up due to state lines, namely OU-Texas, Alabama-Tennessee, and the infamous Civil ConFLiCT! There may have been an easier way to do this (cutting off a couple of the loathsome schools to fit OK in the TX conference) but it would've affected conference championship games so I went with this. The good news is some other rivalries have been restored, like Miami-UF, Mizzou-Kansas, and Texas-TAMU.
As you can probably imagine before even seeing them, this led to some pretty onesided conferences. I even had to avoid pairing AL with the FL-GA-SC conference because it would've led to 4-8 UFs running around, and that's only acceptable with Will Muschamp as the corch. The team I'm choosing to play is right smack in the middle of one of these conferences, so it should be a cool challenge. But more on that later.
All in all, it should be an interesting experiment. There are a couple divisions where the teams are mostly all bad so some team should be able to end up a perennial Top 15 team that never was before. Conversely, some other teams will start being a lot worse.
New Conferences:
Listed in order of Conference Prestige/Average Rank. Teams are in order of Conference Outlook for now.
ACC(FL + GA + SC):
Atlantic:
Georgia
South Carolina
Clemson
Georgia Tech
Florida Atlantic
Georgia State
Coastal:
Florida
Florida State
Miami
UCF
USF
FIU
(I gave the ACC the only Auto bid, just in case. There are a couple filler teams there that maybe it won't get too bad though)
Pac 12(CA + NV + OR + WA + HI):
North:
Oregon
Oregon State
Warshington
Nevada-Reno
Warshington State
Hawai'i
Nevada-Las Vegas
South:
Stanford
UC Los Angeles
USC
UC Berkley
Fresno State
San Diego State
San Jose State
MAC(IN + IL + KY + TN):
North:
Notre Dame
Northern Illinois
Northwestern
Purdue
Illinois
Indiana
Ball State
South:
Louisville
Vanderbilt
Tennessee
Western Kentucky
Kentucky
Mid Tenn State
Memphis
(As a side note, LAWD this league for basketball)
Sun Belt(NE + KS + OK + AR + MN + IA):
North:
Kansas State
Nebraska
Iowa
Missouri
Minnesota
Kansas
South:
Oklahoma
Oklahoma Lite
ArKansas
ArKansas State
Iowa State
Tulsa
(This split looks weird, but other than Min-Tulsa, the protected rivals make it work. Think the proper geographical play would be to put Mizzou in the South and ISU in the North, but no way am I letting them run away from Neb and KU again)
Big 12(TX):
East:
Texas A&M
Texas-Austin
Baylor
Texas-Tech
Texas-San Antonio
Texas State
West:
TCU
Houston
SMU
North Texas
Texas-El Paso
Rice
(Another weird one, but made sure the old Big 12 Texas rivalries were intact this way)
SEC(AL + MS + LA):
East:
Alabama
Ole Miss
Auburn
Mississippi State
Troy
Alabama-Birmingham
West:
LSU
UL Monroe
Louisiana Tech
UL Lafayette
Tulane
Southern Miss
Big 10(OH + MI + WI):
Lead- I mean North:
Michigan
Wisconsin
Michigan State
Western Michigan
Central Michigan
Toledo
Eastern Michigan
South:
Ohio State
Cincinnati
Kent State
Ohio
Bowling Green
Miami(OH)
Akron
(This is the ugliest one. I could've made tOSU the lone Ohio team in the North, but then the South is even uglier. Maybe Wisconsin is the better fit there, but meh. I'll be playing in this division and trying to topple tOSU so until then Irving can have his fun playing one decent(UM) team a year.)
AAC(VA + NC + WV):
Virginia Tech
West Virginia
North Carolina
NC State
Duke
Virginia
East Carolina
Wake
Marshall
Old Dominion
(Considered placing the two MD schools here too, but either way one conf was gonna be without a title game. This one actually looks like the worst conference on paper, which means either the CHOKIES or the couch burners will inevitably win a national title at some point going 12-0.)
MWC(AZ + UT + NM + WY + ID):
Mountain:
Arizona State
Arizona
Air Force
Colorado State
Colorado
Wyoming
West:
Boise State
Utah
BYU
Utah State
New Mexico
NMSU
(Would've been worse had I not swapped AZ and NM. Hamilton's dream come true as CSU has just 3 pretty easy to topple schools standing in their way!)
C-USA(NY + PA + NJ + MD + CT + MA):
East:
Syracuse
Boston College
Connecticut
Army
Buffalo
UMass
West:
Penn State
Rutgers
Pittsburgh
Navy
Temple
Maryland
The good news is, the talent base here is garbage, and the conference is already the worst in the nation, so this conference will definitely be the Sun Belt analogue in like 4 years. A fitting end for Cuse, PSU, and BC. The bad news is PSU will probably go undefeated at some point within those 4 years.
Indy:
Idaho
South Alabama
Anyways, I'll be playing Ohio. Lank is here. FWIW, the AI has tried to schedule separated rival games where possible, though I can't really tell if it's just residual. But TAMU is playing Bama, Texas is playing OU, etc.
Given the circumstances I'm going to take it easy on recruiting restrictions and the like for now. May add on if it gets tough. I'm also starting as a HC because I'm not trying to toil as a DC at Ohio for 5 years only to get at HC offer at the corpse of Temple or something.
If the ACC is too ridiculous, I will likely send KKKLIMPS and USCe to the AAC and figure out two filler teams to add to the ACC. But maybe it'll all work out.
If anyone wants slightly more detailed info on how teams are acclimating, let me know. Or feel free to add suggestions to and/or ruthlessly criticize the team distribution.