We're starting our seventh year on November 1 (with the traditional Essay Season), and one of our summer projects is ranking all the 263 teams of the Other 25 conferences*, based on their performance over the course of the six-year Mid-Majority era. Where to start?

Back in May, we asked our hundreds of mailing list subscribers to rank the legacy importance of 11 different factors, ranging from NCAA Tournament victories to NBA Draft picks. Here was their consensus on each factor (5 being most important, 1 being least important).

* NCAA Tournament victories - 5
* NCAA Tournament appearances - 5
* Conference regular season titles - 4
* Red Line Upsets - 4
* NIT victories - 3
* Leading conference in offensive or defensive efficiency - 3
* 20-win seasons - 3
* NIT appearances - 2
* Individual statistical leaders in conference (PPG or RPG) - 2
* NBA Draft picks - 2
* Other postseason appearances (CBI, CIT) - 1

Then it was time to roll all of this into a big equation -- nerd alert! -- and inflict it on our giant Basketball State database! We also added the average RPI for each school over the past six years (more specifically, 347-(sum of RPI/6)) for a dash of spice.

We ranked all the teams based on the following formula, which is in turn based on the above results of our reader poll. It goes like this: ($ncaawins*5) + ($ncaaapp*5) + ($rlu*4) + ($regssnchamps*4) + ($effldr*3) + ($20wseasons*3) + ($nitwins*3) + ($nitapp*3) + ($indldrs*2) + ($nbapicks*2) + ($othpsapp*1) + ($avgrpi*.01). All numbers were rounded to the nearest integer.

The next thing was to determine a stack order for conferences. Readers voted on that too, and said that pretty much the same things were important for conferences' legacies as for individual teams -- NCAA victories and appearances were rated as 5's, CBI's as 1's. So we ended up with these aggregate numbers:

1. Atlantic 14 - 161; 2. Conference USA - 128; 3. Missouri Valley - 126; 4. Horizon League - 89; 5. West Coast - 84; 6. Colonial - 73; 7. Mid-American - 61; 8. Southern - 56; 9. MAAC - 55; 10. Sun Belt - 49; 11. WAC - 40; 12. Big West - 34; 13. Patriot League - 34; 14. Ivy League - 31; 15. Ohio Valley - 31; 16. Atlantic Sun - 29; 17. MEAC - 28; 18. Badlands - 28; 19. Big Sky - 26; 20. Southland - 25; 21. Big South - 22; 22. NEC - 22; 23. America East - 19; 24. SWAC - 17; 25. Great West - 0.

Ties between schools were broken based on a school's position in the conference stack order, and ties between conferences were broken based on NCAA performance.

There's a Excel spreadsheet that's floating around out there on the web, but we'll be counting down the top 100 on Twitter every day as we approach the season. Here are the teams so far:

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We'll now take some questions.

*What are the "Other 25" conferences?

You must be new here! All Division I leagues below the Red Line. That's America East, Atlantic 14, Atlantic Sun, Badlands Conference (a/k/a Summit League), Big Sky, Big South, Big West, Colonial, Great West, Horizon League, Ivy League, MEAC, Metro Atlantic, Mid-American, Missouri Valley, Northeast, Ohio Valley, Patriot League, Southern, Southland, Sun Belt, SWAC, West Coast, Western Athletic. (Independents count too.) Conference USA, which fell below our Red Line this summer, is included too.

Which teams are eligible for this countdown?

All teams from the "Other 25" conferences. For Conference USA, we made adjustments in order to have its teams be a part of the festivities too (for instance, they won't have any TMM-sanctioned Red Line Upsets until 2010-11). We also took out our three new mid-major "exceptions," Gonzaga, Xavier and Memphis. They would have blown the chart out anyway!

I disagree heartily with my school's ranking!

Don't look at me! The readers designed the algorithm!

Why are you linking to a pay site, you jackwagon?

So that folks can click around Basketball State and learn more about each team, we've extended the free daily pageview limit from four to ten, just for folks who click in via the Twitter links. If you like BB State, you can sign up for two dollars off the annual rate ($17.95) by using special code TMM100 when you check out. Alternately, a subscription comes included when you pony up for out Season 7 Membership package -- plus, you get a book and a t-shirt and a Bally Club Card and other awesome stuff too.