NFL Minor League, part 2

In case you missed it, we are now ready to tackle an NFL Minor League.  In my previous post, I laid out all the cities that would represent each NFL team.  Now I need to decide how the league and divisions will play out.  Since this is a minor league, travel costs need to kept to a minimum, so teams should be grouped regionally.  When I reviewed the minor league cities, it dawned on me that the current NFC/AFC configuration does not make sense to these new cities.  I decided on 6 divisions:  Pacific, Southwest, North, Central, Southeast, and Atlantic.  But wait, how will 32 teams divide evenly across 6 divisions?  They don't.  When you create 4 divisions, geography would work against you.  The other balanced option was 8 divisions, but I think we can agree that would be way too many.  As long as there are more people on the East Coast, there are going to be more teams in the East.  Any attempt to keep balanced divisions across the country will be difficult.  Just ask the NHL.

Here's how I have the minor league cities distributed across the new divisions:

Pacific:  Portland, Sacramento, Fresno, San Jose, San Diego

Southwest:  San Antonio, Oklahoma City, Las Vegas, Wichita, Albuqurque

North:  Milwaukee, Grand Rapids, Des Moines, St. Louis, Louisville

Central:  Toronto, Harrisburg, Dayton, Columbus, Memphis

Southeast: West Palm, Savannah, Orlando, Birmingham, Mobile, Greenville

Atlantic:  Providence, Albany, Wilkes-Barre, Hartford, Wilmington, Norfolk

That would create a situation where the 6 division winners make the playoffs.  2 teams get byes?  Or add 2 wild card teams to make a 8 team playoff.  There's some flexibility here. 

How would this work if we applied these same ideas back to the NFL cities?  Pretty well actually.  Get rid of the ancient, geographically unfriendly connections between teams (Washington/Dallas, Buffalo/Miami) and divisions start making sense again.  

Pacific:  Seattle, Oakland, LA Rams, SF, LA Chargers

Southwest: Houston, Dallas, Denver, KC, Arizona

North:  Green Bay, Detroit, Minnesota, Chicago, Indianapolis

Central:  Buffalo, Pittsburgh, Cincinnati, Cleveland, Tennessee

Southeast:  Miami, Jacksonville, Tampa Bay, Atlanta, New Orleans, Carolina

Northeast:  New England, NY Giants, NY Jets, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Washington

The only thing left is to come up with nicknames/mascots for the new NFL Minor League teams. 

NFL Minor League?

I have always found it odd that the NFL, being one of the most profitable sports leagues, does not have a minor league system.  The NHL and MLB have decent minor league systems in place.  Using those as template could work for the NFL too.  Of course, the NFL has no reason to create a minor league as long as they can use the NCAA as their farm system.  That is a discussion for another time.  That being said, I still like to imagine how minor league football would play out.  Since this is my fantasy, I get to make the rules.  So let's get started...

I think each NFL team should have a minor league team that is located near the NFL city.  It makes no sense having a minor league squad located in a different time zone from its parent NFL team.  In addition, those locations should be decided based on media outlets.  This isn't a charity.  We gotta make some money.  Let's take a look at the largest media markets that do not already have an NFL team AND is located somewhat near existing NFL locations.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_television_stations_in_North_America_by_media_market

Based on this information, I will match up existing NFL cities with potential minor league cities:

NFL City	Minor City
Seattle	Portland
Oakland*	Sacramento
Los Angeles	Fresno
San Francisco	San Jose
Los Angeles	San Diego
Houston	San Antonio
Dallas	Oklahoma City
Phoenix	Tuscon
Kansas City	Wichita
Denver	Albuquerque
Green Bay	Milwaukee
Detroit	Grand Rapids
Minneapolis	Des Moines
Chicago**	St Louis
Indianapolis	Louisville
Buffalo	Toronto
Pittsburgh	Harrisburgh
Cincinnati	Dayton
Cleveland	Columbus
Nashville	Memphis
Miami	West Palm
Jacksonville	Savannah
Tampa	Orlando
Atlanta	Birmingham
New Orleans	Mobile
Charlotte	Greenville
Boston	Providence
New York City	Albany
Philadelphia	Wilkes Barre
New York City	Hartford
Baltimore	Wilmington
Washington	Norfolk

*You may notice that Las Vegas is absent.  The Raiders are moving there, so I thought it was unfair to list Las Vegas as another NFL city's minor league location.  Sacramento can still be the minor league location for Las Vegas whether the Raiders are in Oakland or Las Vegas.  Maybe Oakland can be the Las Vegas minor league city like I did with LA/San Diego.  

**The NFC North teams were tough to balance.  Making St. Louis the minor league city for Chicago seems unnatural thanks to the Cubs/Cardinal baseball rivalry.  Might need to shuffle some of the "NFC North" associations with their minor league cities.  For this exercise, these cities will have to exist in a vacuum, so St. Louis - Chicago stays.

There were some other geographical gymnastics required to make this work.  For example, the Mountain region does not have a lot of people, so it has fewer large media markets.  The Denver-Albuquerque connection is the biggest stretch, but the rest seem to fall into place.  It actually makes sense for the most part.  Not sure if there is even a football appetite in each of the minor league cities I have chosen.

Would the minor cities build a stadium?  Who cares?  I assume if they are large enough to make the media market list, they would already have a stadium or be able to build one.  Besides, how large would an NFL Minor League team stadium need to be?  I honestly have no idea.  

In the next post, I will cover how these teams will interact by creating conferences/divisions.

Finding a creative outlet again

It has been a very long time since I have written a blog.  Giving up on Facebook has left a vacancy in my cathartic activities, so I thought dusting off this antique would be good for my mental well being.  A few months ago, I realized that Facebook was not providing any value so it has become dormant in my life.  To be honest, I still lurk on Facebook a bit, but it no longer provides what I need.  Twitter has emerged as a valid social media outlet, but I consume Twitter more than I create.  Random thoughts limited to 140 characters does not a true outlet make.  That brings me back to a blog.  I wrote a blog fairly consistently back in the aughts, so I think I can recapture that magic and get the creative juices flowing again.