It's to maintain fan interest. Artificial playoff races by having too many divisions. Your proposal would only work if they were to eliminate divisions and only have two huge groups of teams, the AFC and the NFC. And I agree with your idea, but keeping these divisions in place wouldn't work. There would be fans screaming if their team won a division but didn’t get into the playoffs. Eliminate the divisions and the top 7 teams in each conference make the playoffs...