Perhaps the BEST B1G Forum anywhere, here at College Football Fan Site, CFB51!!!

Realistically, conferences aren't shrinking, just being plundered or growing.  I'd do a 16x4 setup, with pods, so each incoming FR class will play everyone else in their conference twice - once home, once away (every other year).

SEC + 2 (KU, OKST)
B10 + 2 (UVA, UNC)
PAC12 +4 (BYU, TCU, OU, Tex)
ACC -2, +4 (ND, WV, KSU, UCF)

I don't actually favor this.  In fact, if it were simply up to me with no restrictions I'd probably be pretty close to Badge.  That said, I think this is roughly where we are headed and I'll be ok with that.  
I think that 14 is a silly number of schools for a conference.  I actually think the old ACC (nine members from 1991-2003) was great.  You had a full round-robin on an eight game schedule.  I also think that 12 works reasonably well particularly if you can avoid locked cross-overs.  If you can, then you can play every team in two (nine game season) or three (eight game season) seasons.  With 14 and at least some locked cross-overs you go too long (IMHO) between playing some of the teams in the other division.  That is why I think 16 would be, at least in some ways, an improvement.  Like you, I'd go to pods and with nine games I would set it up as follows:
In a given season each team plays:

• Their three pod-mates once each (three games)
• The four members of one of the other pods once each (four games)
• One or two probably fixed or semi-fixed members of one or both of the other pods (one or two games)

That is a total of either eight or nine games.  

Here is how I would set it up with OAM's members (UVA, UNC added):

Pod/Group	Grp1	Grp2	Grp3	Grp4
North Pod	M	MSU	PU	NU
East Pod	PSU	UMD	UVA	UNC
West Pod	UNL	Iowa	UW	MN
South Pod	tOSU	RU	IU	IL

With a nine game schedule, each team would play:

• The three other teams in their pod
• The three other teams in their group
• The three remaining teams from one of the other three pods

Example, Michigan:
Every year they would play:

• MSU
• PU
• NU
• PSU
• UNL
• tOSU

Then their other three games would rotate annually between:

• Year 1 (North and East Pods as one division, South and West Pods as the other):  UMD, UVA, UNC
• Year 2 (North and West Pods as one division, South and East Pods as the other):  Iowa, UW, MN
• Year 3 (North and South Pods as one division, East and West Pods as the other):  RU, IU, IL

Thus, in three years Michigan (and every other B1G school) would play every B1G team and in six years they would both both host and travel to every other B1G school.  

To clarify one thing on all of this: It's about more than just football. When I talk about dumping Baylor, it's clearly not about football because they have been more than relevant lately.

When I think about Illinois and relevance, I always come back to the fact that they were able to lure a head coach who took a team to a Super Bowl. Regardless of whether or not you think he's a good coach (I don't think he is), that's saying something.

I'm just saying that outside the B1G, people don't value Illinois or Indiana football any more than they value Iowa State or Vanderbilt football.  So if you're suggesting cutting teams like Iowa State to improve the overall product, which I can totally understand, then programs like Illinois and Indiana are similarly undesirable.  
I too have often thought a system like soccer's relegation would be very helpful if applied to college football.  Obviously that's not a direction Americans are ever really going to favor, but I do believe it would help solve some of the issues we complain about as fans of college football in general.

Never once did I propose cutting Iowa State. Others have, but not me.

Gotcha, I might have mixed up some posts a ways back up there.

the networks will decide what programs get cut

if the networks could only have a smidgen of intelligence, they would see that content is worth the most money and the best content comes from traditional, mostly regional rivalries.

ratings apparently are easy to obtain, the math is simple

This is why I've been promoting 11 schools with 10 conference games and 3 OOC games against like schools.

Content.

I'd rather any day of the week watch Indiana against Illinois than Indiana against Western Kentucky or whatever. In fact, I likely wouldn't watch the latter even if there was nothing else on. And that's ME. A fanatic for college football.

networks don't care about content, they care about viewers.

and cfb is big enough in the sec and b1g footprints that they'll get those viewers vs either indiana or west kentucky.

the only big spikes in viewership is for major games, and no one is going to schedule more than 1 non-conf major game. and i don't mean p5 opp games, i mean bama/fsu, osu/texas, lsu/wisk, mich/nd, etc. they'll play 2-3 already in conf.

ESPN/ABC is going away fellas. Focus on the future. The future for conferences is having their own networks and streaming services. It's already started.

ESPN/ABC is not going away

they are streaming as well

the delivery method will change

the big boys will continue to control the content

That's the takeaway.  Content is king.