i have been saying forever they should go to 4 divisions with 8 teams:
1. you'd play 6 of the other 7 teams in your division once, and play one other team as a home-and-home. it would be a different team each year, of course. this would comprise half your 16-game schedule.
2. you'd play 4 games against teams in the other division (from your conference).
3. the other 4 games would come from the other conference.
the bills division would be:
BUFFALO
miami
n.e.
jets
steelers
ravens
browns
bengals
PLAYOFFS: winner in each division gets a bye. The other 4 teams would all be determined by record, using existing tiebreakers.
This would make a division title really MEAN something, plus it would be much less likely that an 8-8 team would make the playoffs.
i also think it make the division rivalries more exciting if you only played them once a year (except for 1 year out of 7), and only got them at home every other season. also, i like playing the other rust belt teams and we'd be guaranteed a chance to play them every year. the buff/pgh and buff/cleve rivalries should be cultivated by the nfl and this would help that happen.
this is hypothetical of course, but for one of those teams to get in with 7 or 8 wins while green bay sits home with 10 is STUPIDITY!
But i suppose you sell a tiny bit more merch to the fans of all those extra "divisional champions" each year so it's worth it for the nfl to water down the product by having 8 divisions.
why don't they just go all the way and have 16 divisions with 2 teams each and give all 16 division champions a playoff berth? it's only slightly more stupid than the system they have now and just think of the extra useless crap they could sell that has "Division Champions!!" printed on it.