LOL we actually agree on a lot here. I have always thought that March Madness killed the regular season. I would love to see them go to the regular season conference champs being the ones that make the tournament. I have always thought that a 4 or 5 day conference tournament killed the attendance of the regular season for the majority of the teams. I also think a double elimination tournament would be more interesting and more importantly be better at crowning the most deserving champion.

That said, I think the football is headed close to what your are talking about with the 9 team conference. However, call them divisions instead of conferences and you will basically be there. I am still not sure that they can do this with only 16 teams in a conference. I too think the politics will make it difficult to stop at 16. I have posted this several times on this board, but if you look at the ones that get left out from the original post they are either in a small population state or they have a dominant team(s) in their state that does not want another team from there state to be included. This should be interesting to watch, but it has gone to far to turn back now and while it is not all good...it is not all bad either and it has some benefits that make sense for some kids that do not have spending money for college like a lot of kids. Yes there will be a cost of living stipend and that is why the football schools without much attendance are going to struggle IMHO.