How many Upstate coaches does it take to screw in a lightbulb?
12. One to screw it in, and eleven to complain about the sim engine.
****TANGENT ALERT****
I tend to be long-winded, so please feel free to skip the rest of this nonsense.
The NAC has slowly but surely improved, and it's only a matter of time, polo... We are a self-made conference, comprised mostly of rookie coaches who had never played the game before we signed up for the NAC. With the exception of my race-to-D1 experiment in Tark, and adambrag's MBBC title run in some other world (I forget which), none of us have any other teams in other worlds, and to this point we have not hijacked any coaches (though lord knows we've tried) from other conferences/divisions/worlds. And since all the teams were so bad to begin with, we have not a poacher among us.
We've added coaches one-at-a-time, each one rebuilding a dead program into a contender, so it can't happen overnight. But it will happen eventually. Mark my words, good sir. I turned Lasell from nothing into a power. Latz took a moribound Husson team and turned them into a perennial contender. Thomas's coach is as good a recruiter as there is in the business, and that's why they're the top RPI team this year. Castleton St. went from nothing to the Dynasty list. UMF had no track record of success... now they're on the cusp of 3 straight NT appearances. Elms... well, um, I'll let Gene speak for himself... but long-story-short, they're a disaster. The Becker and Salem St. programs have inexperienced coaches, but they will no doubt ascend to postseason heights the same way everyone else here has.
It may take another year (real time) but the NAC will surpass the Upstate eventually. If you care to make it interesting, I'm up for it.