If there is a 16-team Big Ten (or any other conference) they will probably have to play 9 conference games each.
What is being lost with this mega-conference idea is that OOC games will be largely irrelevant. If we are to assume that eventually there will be 4 super conferences, then what matters most is winning that conference.
If getting to a conference championship game in the Big Ten or if the system is set up where the division winners go into a playoff, it would be ridiculous if they only played 8 games. The whole concept is kind of ridiculous anyway, but that extra 9th game could be huge.
Anyway, why would teams schedule any tough OOC games? I'm not saying they will disappear entirely, but out of a 16-team Big Ten we'd probably see one or two solid OOC matchups a year. Hooray!
What makes this 16-team conference size so ridiculous is that there will rarely be legitimate division winners. If Ohio State, Michigan, Penn State and ND are in the same division, there will be tie-breakers for the division title almost every year. Heck, we could all be 7-2 in the conference. How does a 4-way tie sound?
And what really is going to suck is that most likely the division winner each year will be the team that didn't have to play anyone tough from the other division.
For example, Ohio State goes 8-1 in conference but played Minnesota and Northwestern out of division, whereas Penn State went 7-2 and had to play Iowa and Nebraska.
There will be a mountain of controversey every single year...and this is from just one conference!!
And what about Notre Dame in this situation? Is it really fair if one year OSU gets to play Illinois and Minnesota out of division and schedules Akron, Montana State and Duke out of conference when Notre Dame could play Iowa and Wisconsin with USC, Navy and Boston College out of conference?
What if Notre Dame beat OSU head to head, but Ohio State ended up 11-1 or 10-2, and the Irish end up a game behind them in the conference standings? We would have beaten the team that won our division, beaten more ranked teams, and more better teams.
Think about that....