Conference draft

The new season starts in a couple of weeks, and the Division is deciding to do something different this year. Because we are going to have a full 16 teams, Michael came up with the idea to split the teams into two conferences. Basically, you would play each team from your conference once in the regular season, as well as one "interconference" game against a team from the other conference. The playoffs would be like any pro sport - each conference has their own playoffs to determine a conference/league champion, with those two teams meeting in the finals (AFC vs. NFC, AL vs. NL, etc.) Basically, it was a way to do something different, and hopefully create some bonding between teams that play in the same conference (i.e. you would so up to the title game and root for the team from your conference.)

The "draft" was Monday night at the bar after the pick-up game: Michael and Alan from Redrum (the new Board President) randomly drew names from a hat, placing each team on the board to represent each conference. Now, for the record, I suggested having at least two pools of teams - one veteran teams and one new teams - and doing each separately, so that the veteran and new teams would be divided as easily as possible. But, everyone thought that was too complicated.

So what happened? As is usually the case when something is done "random", the results appeared none-to-random. All of the major veteran teams (Valley Girls, Redrum, Wonderballz, Uno Mas, Trey Stafford Explosion, Pregnant Cheerleaders, etc.) were placed in one conference...except for The Ninjas, who are in the other Division. Now, our Division does include the former Royal Blue Ballers (now called Happy Endings), who we beat in the semifinals our first championship year but have taken a few seasons off. There are also at least two teams coming over from Hollywood, and one (Sofa King Good) is a very good team.

Still...it certainly looks like we got a ridiculously easy draw while the other veteran teams got shafted on an idea that a Ninja had. Since we're the big, bad bully in our Conference, I'm sure we're going to be the bad guys all season just because of certain perceptions. If that's what happens, so be it - we'll just play that up by being the best villains we can be.

Also, expect some BIG announcements in the coming weeks before the start of the season that will have a definite impact on you, the AHN fan.