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Ultimately, I think that the best (or least bad anyway) structure is the second one, splitting the divisions as Colorado had thought they were promised, guaranteeing the California schools get to play each other every year, making the schedules fit that framework (as shown in my example), and giving the Northwest schools equal (or approximately equal) revenue sharing to soften the blow of less LA access (though again it wouldn’t help Washington much).

However, if that doesn’t fly, then we could put the California schools into the South and the Mountain schools into the North, or we could try the 3-division experiment and see whether it works out or not. But whatever we do, I just hope it isn’t the zipper idea. Please let us not be that dumb.