could be a means to an end. The schools may need there to be 4 conferences that have a large enough separation from the rest of the schools that it discourages politicians from trying to force "marginal" (power conference school's viewpoint) schools onto their coattails. Once the 64 completely separate themselves, then they break up into 8-10 member conferences that are more regionally based. Since each division in the super conferences have 8 members, the divisions could decide to form their own conference. The conferences already have a model on how it could work when the Mountain West was formed out of the breakup of the 16-member WAC. Theses smaller conferences could decide to pick up 1-2 additional members, but I am not sure there will be this drive for the conference to grow to 12 members.