With territory management, does the account owner field remain very important.  In other words, with territory management now handling sharing and assignment, could the CEO be made account owner for ALL accounts (and then hide the field from user layouts)?  Also, would there be ramifications to contact ownership?  What about syncing via Outlook?  Any other ramifications?  (The organization has multiple reps selling different products into the same account, so one account is part of multiple territories with multiple reps accessing at once.)

The premise is that account owner becomes redundant with territory management invoked, potentially complicating sharing and/or assignment rules.  Also, administration would be eased as individuals don't have to be replaced in the account ownership due to attrition, etc.  (And reps aren't crying because they don't "own" the account in the system...)

Any thoughts on best practices in this situation?