I'm about to head to the gym so I don't have much time.
I'm sure seble listened to the users and decided what he felt was best for the company. You don't have to be a mindreader to know a lot of those who are unhappy but still around were "protecting their turf". You know "participation trophy!!!", "pay your dues!!!", "no way would that recruit go to that crap C- school", etc, etc. I'm sure many of the suggestions were along those lines. Unfortunately, I'm not sure that having the top always remain on top is the way to sell a game. IOW, not many are willing to put in 6-7 seasons before taking UNC Asheville. Then playing with that mess for several seasons before being "lucky enough" to get a terrible B10 team. That's 2 real life years in an ADD society. While the changes were unpopular, they probably didn't tilt the scales far enough to bring in more users because of that 2 year journey to a bad SEC team.
So we have a game that old school didn't like and new school doesn't find enticing due to the 2 year slog to bad teams in good conferences. But they tried. Yay?