One just mathematical note, when Penn State joined the conference as the one new guy, they were immediately playing a full schedule against the historic Big Ten, as still were the historic Big Ten with Penn State mixed in. Everyone had played everyone a ton after a handful of years.
The concentration of that mixture declines every time you add more outsiders to the mix. Maryland joined the league a decade ago and we've played them twice. This will get even more attenuated with the West Coast schools, while also dramatically reducing how much we play the Iowas and Wisconsins of the world.
So the aesthetics of it all and what "feels" traditional is one thing, the realities of the schedule is another.
We will never play something that looks like a Big Ten football schedule again, period. Also outside of the perma-Northwestern rivalry (we hope), we will never play ANYONE on the year-in, year-out basis that was what a "conference" used to mean.
Those are facts, and facts a lot of folks are choosing to not digest, and that's why I had a bee in my bonnet earlier. Embrace it or hate it, but reckon with the reality of it.
I think it still is too early to come to this conclusion. I'll break things down separate with football and basketball for my reasoning:
Basketball:
This actual becomes better than it was as you now just play each other team once. Yes, there will still be some unbalance based on who you play home and away, but that's still far more balanced than it is currently is. And in this case, you could literally say you ran the table, beating every other team in conference. While I do think playing a team twice in a season leads to major rivalries and nastiness, we've been unfortunately trending away from that for a while.
Football:
At 18 teams, this is more difficult to do and while the Rutgers and Maryland adds makes things more difficult with the addition of 4 Pac 10 schools, I actually think there still are possibilities here depending on future expansion. I think much of it hinges on bringing in 3 former Pac10 or B12 schools though. Colorado and Nebraska had a huge rivalry back in the day that I believe would be a big draw for shifting Nebraska to the West bracket. Add on say Arizona and maybe a team like Kansas and you're looking at a breakdown something like this:
West (8):
USC, UCLA, Oregon, Washington, Colorado, Arizona, Kansas (swing Central?), Nebraska
Central (7):
Iowa, Wisconsin, Illinois, Indiana, Purdue, Northwestern, Minnesota
East (6):
Ohio State, Michigan, Penn State, Michigan State, Maryland, Rutgers
That leaves a spot for 3 more teams- North Carolina fits especially with their natural rivalry with Maryland. And 2 Florida teams as natural rivals in FSU and Miami also seem like they would work. Now that puts 9 in the East, 8 in the West, and 7 in the Central. And this would be where axing Rutgers in favor of say Notre Dame, Stanford, or a Texas school would come into play. And then you place Kansas in West or Central depending on who you add.
As for how scheduling would go, you'd play each team in your division once for 7 games, then have a flex champ week, where you rank each division winner 1 thru 3 for the 3 division winners based on conference record then overall record/CFP ranking. Then do the same for the other 21 teams, ranking them 4 through 24. Your #1 division winner earns a bye into the B10 championship and plays at home against the #4 rank team the final game of the regular season. While the #2 division winner plays at home against the #3 division winner for the other spot in the B10 championship. All other teams play a team from another division of similar ranking with them. The other 4 non-conference games can be against anyone you like.
While it'd take some doing, I don't think a system like this would be all that dissimilar to what we have now. Will it go this way? Probably not, but I wouldn't call rivalries dead quite yet, there's still a way to go in my opinion.