I'm a big fan of this sort of consolidation. I've seen a lot of other boards try it with varying degrees of success (of course things spill over, topics wander, threads get hijacked, etc.) but it seems like a great idea that should work especially well on this board since the tone is often more friendly than on others.
I've also seen some boards pin/sticky certain explanations/pieces of information that are referred to often or FAQ's for commonly-asked questions (i.e. what recruits is Duke interested in, charts with past recruiting classes/statistical leaders season and historical/etc., the real story with 1995, etc.) Not sure if that would be a time-saver or not, but it's struck me as a neat idea.
See, I've already hijacked the thread.