I liked the idea of 82, especially with the real schedules where you play your conference more and your division more. 56 just feels like everyone is in one big conference to me.
I'd agree with this if we could do an unbalanced 58 game schedule. However, the shorter schedules are "play every team once" in 29 games and "play every team twice" in 58. I echo dru's statement. There's no sense of division or conference really in a shorter schedule
And it's not like you have to play every game. Let some sim, or you can just play a quarter or a half and sim to the end if you aren't feeling it vs the CPU. The other nice thing of 82 games (if we have them all open) is that you will almost always have games available to play.
Would prefer 58, but don't have a problem with 82. As long as guys aren't having to play 2-3 games a night to keep up.