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

and fewer folks get upset over policies if they're living amongst their own

I live amongst my own: Americans. 

And I suppose arguing about policy, to a degree, is very American. 

I don't mind throwing ideas around. It's a message board and there is no football or basketball to discuss.

Let's look at the "old" football conferences as countries. 1998, let's say.

Big Ten
Big 12
SEC
Pac 10
ACC
Big East

OK, there is some overlap. No biggie.

Big East keeps PA. ACC and Big East merge. 

SEC keeps Florida, SC and GA. 

Big Ten keeps Iowa. 

AZ schools go to the Big 12.

Look at that alignment on a map. Makes some sense.

Couldn’t for the town, or just the politics?

It's just way too liberal for me/us.

Thankfully all of my classes were on the "engineering side".

American politics became increasingly democratic during the 1820s and ’30s. Local and state offices that had earlier been appointive became elective. Suffrage was expanded as property and other restrictions on voting were reduced or abandoned in most states. The freehold requirement that had denied voting to all but holders of real estate was almost everywhere discarded before 1820, while the taxpaying qualification was also removed, if more slowly and gradually. In many states a printed ballot replaced the earlier system of voice voting, while the secret ballot also grew in favour. Whereas in 1800 only two states provided for the popular choice of presidential electors, by 1832 only South Carolina still left the decision to the legislature. Conventions of elected delegates increasingly replaced legislative or congressional caucuses as the agencies for making party nominations. By the latter change, a system for nominating candidates by self-appointed cliques meeting in secret was replaced by a system of open selection of candidates by democratically elected bodies.

Federalist Party, early U.S. national political party that advocated a strong central government and held power from 1789 to 1801, during the rise of the country’s political party system. The term federalist was first used in 1787 to describe the supporters of the newly written Constitution, who emphasized the federal character of the proposed union. Between October 1787 and August 1788, Alexander Hamilton, John Jay, and James Madison wrote a series of 85 essays that appeared in various New York newspapers attributed to the pseudonym “Publius.” The Federalist papers (formally The Federalist), as the combined essays are called, were written to combat Anti-Federalism and to persuade the public of the necessity of the Constitution.The Federalist papers stressed the need for an adequate central government and argued that the republican form of government easily could be adapted to the large expanse of territory and widely divergent interests found in the United States. The essays were immediately recognized as the most powerful defense of the new Constitution.

There are different views here. This was all about getting the Constitution ratified. A Constitution that gave power to the states. Some states wanted even more power, but at some point, we needed a unified country - not a collection of small states.

Were we ever truly united? Some would say no.

Are we united now? Most would say no.

Read my WSJ article. It's good.

What would we be if we were to have five countries, split up into ones like I proposed with the football conferences?

The American Union, similar to the EU? 

A collection of countries using the same currency and military alliance?

I know it's a strange idea, but it's a message board and we are out of season (unless you like college baseball).

It's something to ponder.

The West Coast is nothing like the Southeast, which is nothing like the Northeast.

The Great Lakes are complicated. Illinois and Minnesota are blue bastions (because of their large cities). Indiana, Iowa* and Ohio are red. Michigan and Wisconsin are purple.

* Iowa is not a Great Lakes state.