Someone mentioned below a soccer-style promotion/relegation approach, and that's actually what they should do to maximize the impact.

They should break it up into an A flight and B flight (based on prior year standings) and then have scheduling tiers within those flights perhaps based on projections for the coming year. So let's say you finished in the top half of the CUSA standings in 2017-18. And let's say you're projected to be one of the top 3 or 4 teams this year among those who finished in the upper half last year. Your 2018-19 conference schedule is going to be home and home against the other 6 teams in the A flight and single games against the top 4 projected teams from the B flight. That way your best teams have the best chance of avoiding altogether playing any RPI killing games against the very worst teams in your league (which is literally almost the only point of rigging a conference schedule the way they're trying to).

So you do that this year and you have a promotion/relegation approach to the flights going forward. Say the top 2 or 3 teams from the B flight move up to the A flight in 2019-20 and the bottom 2 or 3 teams from the A flight move down. It doesn't matter - it's just for scheduling purposes. Everybody still plays each other every year except for matchups between the very best and very worst teams in the conference *which are worthless games anyway*, especially in a league with no meaningful history.
[Post edited by Gobbler-100 at 05/30/2018 3:00PM]