[SkiBum80]

Larry at work and I white-boarded something similar during the conference realignment frenzy. However, we went by an 8 (conference) x 10 team model and included a mandatory 9 round robin conference schedule to select each of 8 playoff participants with 3 non-conference games to help with overall seeding by conference power ranking. And for kickass intersectional matchups that don't kill playoff hopes. Now, everything is intersectional all the time. No conference championship games, which are unnecessary with round robin. We also added relegation to make sure that anyone who wants in on playoff football can earn their way into the playoff by winning games and ultimately their conference. Each of the 8 conferences would have a line below the tenth team. Fall below that line and become relegated. Maybe we were watching too much Ted Lasso at the time.

There is a remarkable similarity to some of our conference names. I'm starting to wonder if Larry's office is bugged.

Pacific
Mountain
Plains
Great Lakes
Northeast
Mid Atlantic
Mid South
Southeast

Without seeing which teams in your conferences, still I would suspect by its nature it preserves a lot more of the historical rivalries as in-conference games, that the 12 conference organization misses and would have to arrange as out of conference. Also it seems hard to know how else to fairly handle the initial outcasts other than a promotion/relegation method, regardless of whether one has experienced Ted Lasso enculturation or not.

[SkiBum80]

Larry at work and I white-boarded something similar during the conference realignment frenzy. However, we went by an 8 (conference) x 10 team model and included a mandatory 9 round robin conference schedule to select each of 8 playoff participants with 3 non-conference games to help with overall seeding by conference power ranking. And for kickass intersectional matchups that don't kill playoff hopes. Now, everything is intersectional all the time. No conference championship games, which are unnecessary with round robin. We also added relegation to make sure that anyone who wants in on playoff football can earn their way into the playoff by winning games and ultimately their conference. Each of the 8 conferences would have a line below the tenth team. Fall below that line and become relegated. Maybe we were watching too much Ted Lasso at the time.

There is a remarkable similarity to some of our conference names. I'm starting to wonder if Larry's office is bugged.

Pacific
Mountain
Plains
Great Lakes
Northeast
Mid Atlantic
Mid South
Southeast

Without seeing which teams in your conferences, still I would suspect by its nature it preserves a lot more of the historical rivalries as in-conference games, that the 12 conference organization misses and would have to arrange as out of conference. Also it seems hard to know how else to fairly handle the initial outcasts other than a promotion/relegation method, regardless of whether one has experienced Ted Lasso enculturation or not.