kinda OT:
this is why our economy is the ....GREED and the stupidity of the little train that couldn't---always thinking "if I do what they do, I'll be rich too"
have this baboons even thought about the travel expenses for competition, let alone recruiting?
on second thought, maybe having geographically "divided" conference such as this would be beneficial to recruiting for all members of each conference. You will have fewer fish in a much bigger pond if you just made all the conferences go to this setup! then you'd just recruit against other conference teams more so than your own