or a new conference or whatever idea you have is that the average conference record of all teams at the end of the year will be .500. Right now Boise, USU, and whatever the top AAC teams are this month are padding their season W/L records with a bunch of games against their conference basement dwellers. That's why they're able to finish the regular season regularly winning 9, 10, or 11 games each year. There's only a couple of really tough teams they have to play.

If you build a conference of only really good teams, then everyone suffers. Pretty much everyone starts to experience regular seasons with lower win totals because you lose the patsy games, and every week becomes a tough game.

Even the great SEC operates on this principle. You have Alabama, Auburn, LSU, Georgia and aTm who get to pick up regular guaranteed wins vs. Tennessee, Kentucky, Vandy, Arkansas, and Mississippi State. If you took out the bottom tier SEC teams, you definitely wouldn't currently have 4 SEC teams in the top 10. The attrition rate is higher, and it becomes harder to have a special season or even get ranked.

The only reason I could see doing it where it might benefit the more elite G5 teams would be if we moved to a system where the top 5 or 6 conferences based on overall conference strength get auto bids to a playoff. As long as there's an hard line between G5 and P5, it pays a G5 team to be a top dog in a conference with the bottom filled out with weaker teams.