I like the 12 team playoff better than 4, but I think we can all agree there’s clearly some issues. This proposal is not a solution for fair compensation (a whole other can of worms.) This is a solution to the playoff bid problem:

I’ve been wanting a World Cup style tournament for a while and here’s one possible way of structuring the leagues, regular season, and postseason play. 

Basically we would have two leagues - Premier (40 teams) and a lower league (80 teams).

Premier league regular season:

1. 4 regional conferences, 10 teams each.
2. 9 game conf. schedule. 
3. Zero out of conf. games. 

Premier league Postseason:

1. Top 8 from each conf. placed into 8 groups of four - World Cup style draw (This ensures only ooc games are played during round robin play. 
2. Group round robin (3 ooc games each).
3. Top 2 from each group seeded into 16 team single elimination tournament. 
4. Winner is NC. 

Lower league regular season:

8 regional conferences of 10 teams. 
9 game regular season. 

Lower league postseason:

1. Top 2 from each lower conf. seeded into 16 team single elimination playoff. 

Offseason promotion/relegation:

1. Each Premier conf. possesses 2 lower league conferences (feeders). 
2. Two bottom dwellers in each premier conf. (regular season results) relegated to corresponding lower league. 
3. Top team from each lower league conf.(regular season results) gets promoted to corresponding premier league conf. 

Sounds like fun to me! I know many of you have your own ideas, what do you think of this one specifically?