<SYSTEM_TASK:>
Solve the following problem using Python, implementing the functions described below, one line at a time
<END_TASK>
<USER_TASK:>
Description:
 def _parse_conference(self, stats):
 """ Parse the conference abbreviation for the player's team. The conference abbreviation is embedded within the conference name tag and should be special-parsed to extract it. Parameters stats : PyQuery object A PyQuery object containing the HTML from the player's stats page. Returns ------- string Returns a string of the conference abbreviation, such as 'big-12'. """

        conference_tag = stats(PLAYER_SCHEME['conference'])
        conference = re.sub(r'.*/cbb/conferences/',
                            '',
                            str(conference_tag('a')))
        conference = re.sub(r'/.*', '', conference)
        return conference