lets say that team x is supposed to get moved down to gold from plat. They ditch half their roster and pick up half a new roster of good players (perhaps from gold, perhaps some from plat). now their team is going to completely annihilate gold. They would do fine in plat (perhaps mid plat), but they are unable to be moved up becuase there is a 9 team limit.

So just a worry that if you put a hard limit on the number of teams able to play in plat, youll end up with the situation where teams that should be in plat cant play in plat (cause the limit) so they get stuck in gold... then gold is thrown off for a season cause one team anihilates everybody.
If it was to be an admin decision (where admins look closely at each team -- not just at the roster and the previous experience of the players on it), it would be OK to have 16 teams. Though itd be a large division, it would still be competitive.

I'm not sure if i'm just not seeing the problem correctly. I don't see an issue with having a large divison (even 20 teams...). If all the teams are capable of playing at the level then who cares how big the division is? Isn't the issue more about teams that are not good enough to play in plat being allowed into plat? That drives the competitiveness of the division down. If that gets sorted then that problem is gone and the divison can be competiitive even with 15-20 teams. As a disclaimer, i'm not saying that having only 9 teams is bad. If 9 is the number of teams (or for that matter even 7) that can compete at a platinum level then thats how many teams there should be. But if theres 15 teams that can compete at a platinum level... well then they should be allowed to play.

Though that then brings up the issue of what is "platinum level". Why can't that be modeled off whatever is currently mid plat? A team like pingpong or quality control or giraffes team. It would seem foolish to bring those teams down to gold to compete with teams like LDS or dedoris.

the notion of a hard stop 'limit' on the amount of teams (in any division for that matter -- doesnt have to be plat exclusive) seems kind of foolish imo. Unless there is a logistical problem (2 mods cant handle 70 teams then obviously we either a need more mods or b cant have that many teams) id say leave limits alone.

And you're right, i am worried about being able to get in to plat. Though bringing the low plat teams down to gold will make gold more exclusive. It just seems kind of incorrect to limit the amount of new blood coming into a divison.

TL;DR players should be able to play at their skill level.