By Rob Bonnet BBC Sport

If only the Football League had a blank sheet of paper, a free hand with which to design a new structure, unhindered by the forces of personal ego and self-interest.

But it does not.

History, tradition and the emotions they generate have made irrational fools of us all - fans and club chairmen alike.

Duo pay the price

Sometimes it seems that only the players and their agents have their business heads on.

But if the Football League did not exist, you certainly would not invent it in its present form.

Consider this:

It has 72 clubs on a national stage but many with corner-shop economies, most of them in debt even before the collapse of ITV Digital.

League chief executive David Burns was forced to resign

The League's product looks distinctly second rate compared to the Premier League.

That is why ITV Digital did not work across the nation but Sky Sports does.

And while the League's clubs attract admirable loyalty from their hard-core local support, most of the country's football fans wouldn't personally give a fig if 30 of them went out of business.

Unless the axe fell on their own club.

Brutal but true.

Sure, they would pay lip-service to loss of heritage and speak of local communities losing their point of focus, but they see the world ultimately through a filter of their own team's colour.

The full-time professional system across the League just does not work.

The First Division must go it alone with its own TV contract.

Meanwhile, the Second and Third should pool together as part-time operations, cutting their financial cloth accordingly, presumably as Second Divisions North and South.

It surely will not happen by next season any more than turkeys will be voting for Christmas in mid-November.

But the butchery will surely be less in a semi-professional regional format, with its reduced wages and expenses.

It feels back-to-the-future.

To a time when football survived on gate receipts alone and when players were paid much the same wages as the fans who watched them.

Maybe club loyalty will come back into fashion?

There will be serious objections, of course.

Shrewsbury could switch between north and south

Certainly from the Professional Footballers' Association as its membership reduces along with players' earning power - and probably from chairmen and fans alike who'll see an enforced contraction of their ambition.

And what of football's pyramid, you might say.

What if only southern clubs get promoted from the second division (probably via a lucrative play-off system), but only northern clubs get relegated.

In fact - no problem.

Just redraw the Second Division North/South divide accordingly to rebalance the two leagues.

Mansfield or Shrewsbury perhaps in the south one season, but in the north the next?

What is certain is that the League and its new chairman and chief executive will need to embrace lateral and radical thinking in order to jettison the baggage of the past.

The ITV Digital story has finally jolted us away from our sentimental fantasies that somehow "The Game" has an automatic entitlement to protection from reality.

From now on, the Football League must stand or fall on its quality alone. Leaner and meaner. Reduce to expand.

Glib slogans maybe - but here are some more.

The status quo has no status. There is no time like the present to plan for the future.