Round 12 of the SB Nation Re-Draft was completed recently (sorry, I've been out of town following bikes for the week) when our conference comissioner selected Northwestern University as the 12th member of the Twelve-Pack. Please go visit our new conference mates at Sippin' On Purple to say hello.
The conference was excited to add yet another outstanding academic institution in a huge media market. Though Northwestern certainly has to share the Chicago area with several other schools and transplants, the combination of Northwestern with nearby Wisconsin, Minnesota, and Purdue gives us a huge presence in the nation's number 3 market (remember, we have number 2 with us, and no one in NYC watches college football). Chicago apparently has a couple bars and restaurants worth visiting, too, and Evanston certainly works as an attractive destination for road trips.
The Wildcats boast an up and coming football program under the leadership of Pat Fitzgerald. And while Northwestern is famously the only D-1 school never to play in the NCAA basketball tournament, the heightened exposure of its new conference and the opportunity to compete against basketball powers Texas, Wisconsin, Duke, and U.C.L.A. will raise its standing nationally. And as with all the Twelve-Pack school, non-rev sports are not forgotten, with Northwestern having a good overall athletic progran, highlighted by its 6 national titles in the last 7 years in women's lacrosse.
Here is the current lineup of the 6 super-conferences. Well, one could argue that it's one super conference (ours) and 5 other guys, but that thread is coming later. Table below stolen borrowed from our friends and Commissioner at BCInterruption:
Comissioners and Conference names: BCI: Twelve Pack; BHGP: Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants; TSK: The Empire (working title); BECB: Conference TMZ; HoS: House of a Thousand Sanctions; RCR: The Cult Of Les Miles
While real world conferences like the Big Ten and the Big Twelve seem to struggle with the concept of numbers, the Twelve Pack aims for mathematical accuracy and will likely stop adding teams at this point. Twelve equals twelve, after all. The other conferences on the board may still be adding, so we will keep an eye on that. We will follow with a couple more posts considering division alignments, conference game locations, the relative merits of the various conferences, and whether any other teams are being overlooked. Any and all comments on these or other topics are welcome. Fire away.