Quote Originally Posted by S.A.C. View Post
My point is that, in a league that supposedly has separate divisions and gives first round playoff byes to the division winners, part of that type of arrangement is having an unbalanced schedule. They could no longer realistically get away with pretending to have separate divisions if every team in the league is playing each other the same number of times. It would be difficult to justify arbitrarily designating the team that was in 4th or 5th place in the 10-team league to inexplicably be a "division winner" and give them a first round playoff bye and then a home game in the semi-final.
I don't think the League would have each team playing each other twice, inter divisional match-ups would still be prominent in the schedule. When people talk about schedule balance it has nothing to do with teams playing each other an even numbers of times, it's to balance out the bye weeks and the time teams have between games. I personally think the whole one division thing is way over blown, and I don't think people really understand how important East vs. West is during the playoffs, also when's the last time we had an all West Grey Cup ? Winnipeg's tenure is the East doesn't count.

The West had been stronger in the NHL and NBA for years, and they didn't change anything.