My suggestion would be that we play the challenge in either game 4 or game 10 of the non-confernece slate, with a preference for game 10. That gives all of our FR time to mature a bit and for us all to figure out what we have in our teams before playing the challenge. I would suggest we use RPI from the season before the schedule is set to set up the matchups. So in this case, if we start the challenge with season 57, the matchups would be based off of season 55 RPIs and Heartland #1 would play CVAC #1, so on and so forth. The only complicating factor is that in a lot of cases, the #1 teams from both conferences will be playing in the Yarnell. If that happens, CVAC #1 will play Heartland #2 and Heartland #1 will play CVAC #2. All other matchups would be the same (3 vs. 3, 4 vs. 4, etc.).
As for determining home and away, let's alternate season's using the following setup based off of the Heartland's final standings.
Season 1:
Heartland teams 1, 3, 5, 7, 9, 11 all play at home.
Heartland teams 2, 4, 6, 8, 10, 12 all play on the road.
Season 2:
Heartland teams 1, 3, 5, 7, 9, 11 all play on the road
Heartland teams 2, 4, 6, 8, 10, 12 all play on the road.
I will gladly serve as commisioner for the challenge if that is ok with everyone. We will need one person telling everyone who to schedule. I would nominate caesari as the Challenge's record keeper. He can update us every season on the results of the challenge and how the series stands over time. Lastly, I would nominate Mr. davefilby as our game recapper (check out what he was doing on the D2 Iba thread last season...the man can write a mean recap!).
Thoughts?