The point is if we are discussing how things should be organized now. There is no reason to consider UMD. discuss it from a point of view of who is currently in the conference.

You could organize divisions with teams getting their primary 2 rivals. maybe some things would need to be sacrificed. But you can't run a 14 team conference in the same way it was run when it was 8 teams. everybody was a rival when it was 8 teams. can't do that now.

By the way pods would fix all of this. each team would get 3 primary rivals who play they would play every year. and each team would see the rest of the conference often enough to promote solid secondary rivalries