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.