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This conversation (while enjoyable) is starting to sound like the meeting on the side of the road in the It's a Mad Mad Mad Mad World when nearly the entire ensemble cast (Rooney, Berle, Winters, Cesar, Hackett, etc.) are arguing over how to split the $250Gs and they cast the scorn towards Ethel Merman's character (the old bag).

Every Man for Himself

I'd settle for 10 team conferences. Otherwise you lose too much history

The B1G, SEC and PAC would have the most to lose by going with less than 10, let alone 8 or 9.

Those 3 conferences have had the most stability over the years - one since 1896, which spans 3 different centuries. Who ya gonna drop to get to 8?

So let's look at 6 conferences with 10 schools each. Not much work to do with the Pac-10, Big Ten or SEC.

I'd settle for 10 team conferences. Otherwise you lose too much history

The B1G, SEC and PAC would have the most to lose by going with less than 10, let alone 8 or 9.

Those 3 conferences have had the most stability over the years - one since 1896, which spans 3 different centuries. Who ya gonna drop to get to 8?

So let's look at 6 conferences with 10 schools each. Not much work to do with the Pac-10, Big Ten or SEC.

What do you then do with Utah, Arky and Texas Tech? No to mention TCU, BYU, etc.

If you're doing 10 school conferences, there are several current P5's who would get squeezed out.

'Fro has proposed dropping schools like ISU and others. Don't look now, but ISU is getting serious about its program.

Already gave up annual games against Michigan, Michigan State, Penn State, and Ohio State. Getting guarantees against a single, contiguous, geographically meaningful conference (including Iowa, Minnesota, and either ND or Michigan State), and having the opportunity to put the likes of Michigan, Michigan State (or ND), Penn State, and Ohio State on a permanent rotation (two of them every year), while still having room for three other OOC games against quality opponents seems like a win. I'm ok with giving up Indiana to get there.

Which is how I get to an 8-team conference realignment.

If what you really want is return to the old Big and Pac-10 and a way to for ND into a conference, I like that idea, too (except the ND thing), but I'm not sure it's any more realistic. :-)

For the playoff, you could even do a regional quarterfinal, where the West and the Pacific always play each other, the Midwest and the East, Texas and Appalachia, and South and Atlantic South (or some similar combination, with the intent to avoid making a Florida team fly to Seattle, or vice versa). Then do nationally based neutral site semis and final.

Of course, another way to approach this would be to trim the fat, English Premier League style. Go to 8-team conferences by taking out the worst two, and make those teams fight for the scraps. Finish in the bottom two in your conference and you're out, replaced by the top of Tier 2 (whether that's Western Michigan, Northern Illinois, North Dakota, Indiana...).

Yeah, I realize this is the B1G board and the proposal in the original post is coming from a B1G fan, but to the rest of the country, Indiana and Illinois football are no more sacred than Iowa State or Vanderbilt.  If we truly want to "trim the fat" then there are programs in every conference that could be dropped without the bat of an eye.

Speaking for myself:
When I talk about "trimming the fat" it isn't in a "quality of football" sense, it is in a "revenue brought to the table" sense.  This is because it is and always has been about money.  A school with good football (much better than IU, IL, ISU, or Vandy) but few or no fans (and thus no ratings boost) is "fat" while a school with bad football and lots of fans is not.