I think this comes about as a result of traditional rivals being put in separate divisions of a mega conference. The ACC is basically up to 15 teams (with ND), so they will only play the cross-division teams every 4 years or so in conference.

If the MAC expanded to 16 and Miami (or even BG/Kent/Akron) ended up in the other division, I would consider something like this or at least view it as not ridiculous. But in the present set up, no thanks.

I think that'd be pretty unlikely. Ohio State can schedule anyone and make the same profit. They sell out every game. They can buy a MAC school and generally get an easy win.

For North Carolina and Wake Forest, they'll have a much higher attendance playing each other rather than playing some other random team. That substantial extra revenue is more important to them than an easy win. In addition, if you read the story, they were going to go seven years without playing each other. There were only be three or four years tops between games in the Big Ten.

I really don't see this being widespread. B12 has each team playing everybody else in the conference. Pac-12 is already playing a 9-game conference schedule, and SEC will soon follow, so they'll be able to handle rivalries. B10 is able to accommodate nearly all the old rivalries with an 8-game schedule. This looks like an anomaly. I think we have more concern over them scheduling fewer G5 teams in favor of adding more OOC snob-conference teams.

You raise a great point. It seems likely that the FCS schools will take a major hit. A win over BG or Tulane may not help Alabama much, but it will still mean much more than a win over Murray State or Tennessee Tech. I can easily imagine the P5 schools reducing or eliminating FCS games, but still wanting/needing 7-8 home games, and thus continuing to buy G5 games.

If this is right, and I suspect it is, now that I think about it, the G5 schools will end up about where they are. They will still be able to get paydays from money games, but they will have some extra expenses from increasing the scholarships to cover out of pocket expenses. Meanwhile the FCS schools will really get hit hard, losing most of their big money game deals with P5. There will still be a few money games paid for by G5 teams like Ohio, but there will be a lot more teams looking for them than there are G5 teams buying games, so the price could very easily fall.

We've seen a huge rush of schools in recent years trying to escape FCS, where the economics have all the negatives of Division I without any of the positives. That seems likely to increase.