(07-31-2020 09:48 AM)ccd494 Wrote:  For non-football, one-bid conferences? I want 6 tightly packed, similar schools.

Six schools who all play the same sports, and thus qualify for automatic bids. In basketball, you can play a "double-double" round robin. Two home games against each conference mate, and two away, for a total of 20 games, in a geographically compact area. For sports like soccer, lacrosse, etc. you can play each conference mate once home and once away for a 10 game conference season.

This gives you the best opportunity to make the NCAA tournament: only 5 other teams to finish ahead of. At the lower level of D-I, there's no real money from media rights, but what little trickles in will be divided into a smaller pie. Same for NCAA tournament shares.

Also, think of the rivalries. What better way to engender hate than to see your five biggest rivals four times per year each. Five times if you meet in the conference tourney!

Six makes a league extremely vulnerable to a raid. If the conference loses just two schools, the remaining four are not going to try to back fill and save the conference. They are going to go into every-school-for-itself mode and try to get into other leagues. In all likelihood, someone is going to be the last school out in musical chairs and be left without a conference.

There is a reason that in July 2021, there will be only four conferences with fewer than ten members. One is the ultra secure Ivy League. Two are the WAC and the MEAC, the two leagues most in danger of going out of business. The other is the ASUN, which is probably okay but has lost more than twice as many members as it currently has.

Conferences not named the Ivy League need to have ten or more members.