College basketball has a habit of downplaying conference titles. Above all else, NCAA tournament success is what matters to coaches, players, athletic directors, media members and fans. Come February, we spend far more time obsessing about seeds and bubble status than tracking the state of the major conference races. It takes something remarkable -- like Kansas' streak of 12 Big 12 titles -- to elevate regular-season league championships beyond the "good for them, but are they a No. 1 seed?" threshold.
This is a regrettable state of affairs. Conference titles require sustained success against a team's most familiar, well-scouted (and ostensibly financially similar) opposition. They should be a bigger deal.
Which is why we've added to our preseason prediction offerings a top-to-bottom look at every conference race, complete with projected standings. Will a significant portion of these be wrong? Probably! Will you care slightly more about conference titles if you have incorrect predictions to lord over us in March? We can only hope.