I’d resigned to going with the flow on markdown - everyone seems to be using it, including github. My past fights picking what I liked instead of what is popular included Replay (vs Tivo) and mercurial (vs git.)
But, I think Eric is right about his reservations… http://ericholscher.com/blog/2016/mar/15/dont-use-markdown-for-technical-docs/
So, maybe I will take a harder look at Sphinx.