Why does conference expansion HAVE to include 16 teams??

It doesn't have to be 16. Some have suggested we will eventually have 4 - 20 team conferences. The number of teams imo will ultimately be determined by economics. But why 4 conferences?

If you were designing this from scratch, you really wouldn't even have conferences (meaning quasi-independent management organization). There is too much costly redundancy. You would probably opt for an NFL model with divisions based on some optimal playoff model for the total number of teams.

However, we have entrenched interests that means we have to live with the redundancy. Right now there are 4 stable regions (SEC, B1G, ACC, and the PAC12). The Big 12 is highly unstable and the Big East is just not important enough, in Football to force their way in. So it looks like four is what we are going to end up with.

I think we are going to a sort of super div (subset of the FBS model) within the NCAA, or an entirely separate athletic organization will be formed. This group will be for the haves that will have high barriers in terms of facilities and expenditures for entry. I believe the the player stipend discussions were a shot over the bow to signal that this is going to be an expensive proposition, so that the ULLs and the like need not apply.

I think it will start at about 64 teams but will have room to expand if a team meets the criteria. This will stop the monopoly cries and so forth. 64/4 = 16, but we do not need to get there right away, but it is an advantage to get there first. I think we are still a few years away, but this is where I think we are heading.

I've said it before, but the SEC wants to get to 16 teams as fast as it can. It's in the contract with ESPN that the SEC can tear up the current tv contract if it expands to 16 teams.

A new tv contract with 16 SEC members could go on the open market and command a fee nearly twice what the current contract pays.

Each SEC member in a 16 team conference could wind up with around $40 million a year.

Your prediction makes sense Indiana and it is what I feared when much of the playoff talk heated up. Such a system will lead to an NFL model which college football purists desparately want to avoid. The regular season will be SEVERELY devalued and eveyone`s schedule will be unrecognizable. Long time rivalries and fun road trips will be a thing of the past and what made the SEC great will be lost. Everyone needs to be very careful what they wish for. You just might get it. If the expansion model does it go right you can kiss a lot of what made college football so great goodbye.

Under the current system, I'm against anything more than a 4 team playoff because it will devalue the regular season by a lot. However, you can solve the problems if you are starting from scratch.

If you rationalize down to say 64 teams, the quality of everyone's schedule goes way up. You can take away all scheduling from schools and do it centally, so there is at least an attempt to equalize things. Finally, you can count all games in the conference standings.

With the amount of money generated thru TV, you can equalize home and away schedules. The only concession I would make is if you have a stadium < x, then you lose a home game to those with bigger stadiums. This would incent an investment to reach minimum standards.

Would they do any of this? I don't know, but the point is that a playoff can be designed that doesn't rip the heart out of the regular season when you start from scratch.

One more point. Even though the future conferences may be called the SEC, ACC, etc, they will not in form be the conferences we know today. This will be like the merger of the NFL/AFL with multiple divisions etc. Over time people get used to it because it is such a great game.