The Problem
To date, one of the most inconsistent and inherently biased systems left in sports is the existence of divisions and conference. All American sports have them, and they were invented in a time where it was necessary to group and separate teams geographically. But with the improvement of travel, the reasons for keeping this archaic and frankly broken system becomes fewer and fewer. Teams are constantly getting hurt (or helped) for simply existing in a geographic area, which on it's own is beyond silly, not to mention that these geographical determinations can be fairly arbitrary in and of itself. The Indianapolis Colts are in the AFC South, calling the Texas baseball teams west is a stretch, the Oklahoma City Thunder are neither North or West despite being in the Northwest Division, the Detroit Red Wings are in the Atlantic Division despite being about the same distance away from the Atlantic Ocean as Columbus who are in the Metropolitan, the list goes on and on. Conferences can get just as bad. Most of the time they are simply formed as one professional league absorbed another, but why is that a determination? Why are Cincinnati and Cleveland in different Leagues in baseball? Why are the Chicago Blackhawks in the west? Odd geographical situations are forgivable if so much was not riding on this relative randomness. Each teams path to the playoffs is intrinsically linked to their schedule, which is in large part determined by these conferences and divisions, and even more directly they are competing record-wise against these teams to make the playoffs and in the playoffs, while pretty much ignoring the other conference entirely. This leads to teams getting unfairly punished for existing. History is rife with these examples. The Patriots in 2008 were left out of the playoffs as a 11-5 team while the 8-8 Chargers got in. In 2011, the Seahawks got in at 7-9, while two 10-6 teams were left out. In the NBA, being in the Western Conference has made your road to the playoffs harder for the last 20+ years. Just this year the East's fifth seeded Pacers have the same record as the West's eighth seed Clippers, and it was even worse the past five years. On the other side, many complained that Lebron's Cavaliers circa 2015-2018 had a free trip to the finals because of a weak Eastern Conference. In Baseball, most years have a team that is left out with a better record than a team that makes the playoffs because of conference or division. And that doesn't even factor in the relative strength of schedule that also throws all this into chaos. Is it fair that the Columbus Blue Jackets have to play in the Metropolitan Division, the hardest division in Hockey (they sent five teams to the playoffs this year and the wild card team Carolina Hurricanes had more or equal points to half of the western conference playoff teams) or for the Orioles and Blue Jays to have to go up against the perennially dominant Yankees and Red Sox 38 total times a year? Theoretically this should all balance itself out due to parity from the draft, however this often does not happen in reality. Like stated before the Red Sox and Yankees have been good for 20+ years, same with the Western Conference in basketball, and the Metro has been the hardest division for 5+ and looks to stay that way for at least a bit longer.
TLDR: Divisions and conferences are almost always unfair, don't sort themselves out and are grouped arbitrarily enough to be a problem.
The Solution
In my opinion, the best and most balanced regular season format exists in European Soccer. Everyone plays everyone twice, once home and once away. This system should be adopted as closely as possible in American sports. In the NBA, with 30 teams, this can be done exactly, every team plays each other twice, once home and once away. This drops the schedule down to 58 games, and paring the NBA schedule down is desperately needed anyway. If paring games down is not an option, three games against each team is 87 games, only 5 more than what you currently have. For the playoffs, they should just be seeded straight up 1-16 or however many teams you want in the playoffs (over half the league makes the playoffs in the NBA, which seems unnecessary). The NHL, being very similar to the NBA, should be able to do the same. MLB can have each team play a single 4-6 game series against everyone else, 4-6 being how many games you want in a season. Even numbers can split the home and road evenly, but a five game series has a winner in each series and 145 total games seems like a better number than 116 or 174. Playoff seeding again only by record. For all three of these sports, we are removing divisions and conferences entirely, meaning for baseball the leagues need to merge rule sets, which honestly should've happened already. The NFL is by far the hardest to schedule, as 31 games in a season is far too many. In the interest of not rocking the boat to much, the NFL can keep it's conferences, and just have everyone play each other once inside your conferences. That leads to 15 games, only one less than what we have currently. If inter-conference play is absolutely necessary keep divisions, get rid of conferences, and you play against your division once each (home and away switching per year) and then a rotating three divisions from the other seven. Once again, seeding and playoffs should only be based on record, there is no reason to have division winners always make it. These solutions are not perfect, and will obviously need a lot of tweaking, but are a step forward into a more balanced regular season, one that is not decided where you are located, which is something that a team can't help and therefore should not be punished or rewarded for. In addition, except for football, everyone plays everyone, so besides that being more fair on it's own, is also better for a lot of consumers as you get to see a lot of different match-ups.
TLDR: We need to reorganize rules to get it as close to European Soccer as possible, where everyone plays everyone twice. This means removing conferences and/or divisions.
Conclusion
I realize this is unlikely to ever happen as dramatic changes to format and scheduling are very rare. Messing with games played affects history too much and requires too much change, but I will maintain this is a superior system. The one drawback off the top of my head is that it may harm rivalries, as many rivalries are developed from seeing division opponents a lot. To that, I have a few counter arguments. Many of the biggest rivalries are in European Soccer (which uses this system) and in College Basketball and Football, where each team only sees each other once or twice. They say absence makes the heart grow fonder, and that can help rivalries. Secondly, many of these traditional rivalries in professional sports ( which to be honest is not many) should be traditional enough to stay hot even without seeing each other multiple times. The Eagles will always hate the Cowboys even if they only see each other once, same with the Packers and Vikings/Bears. Maybe even more so. The NBA really only has the Lakers and Celtics as traditional rivals, and they are in opposite conferences already anyways. The Yankees Red Sox rivalry won't change if they only play one series. And if they only do play one series and the team that wins get bragging rights for the year, that might be better than playing 19 games that may not matter.