The league has a history of having divisions that make no sense geographically (New Orleans and Atlanta in the NFC West, Dallas in the NFC East, etc) so I don’t see the league caring too much about geographic integrity when the time comes to put another team in el-Lay.
Personally, I’d put an expansion team there, and in San Antonio, Salt Lake City and in Memphis. I like the six six team division concept so re-alignment would be a must.
Memphis? Tennessee already has the Titans.
Memphis and Nashville (home of the Titans) don’t like each other, the way Cleveland and Cincinnati don’t like each other and Philly and Pittsburgh don’t like each other. Memphis could support a team just fine.
The only Tennessee team the entire state likes are the Vols.
I don’t know Tennessee, but I don’t see the point of putting two teams there and overlooking, say, Vegas. According to Wikipedia, the Memphis metro area is less populous than both Jacksonville and Nashville, which is probably why the Titans went to Nashville.
Vegas isn’t getting a team until the casinos stop taking bets on NFL games, so Vegas isn’t getting a team before hell freezes over.
I’m not married to Memphis as an NFL site, but LV is a nonstarter.
It’s the Argos ownership who’re sponsoring the program.
Their plan, I would assume, rests on two possibilities:
Or,
I think it would be a terrible shame for Buffalo to lose their NFL team, but you have to admit that from a purely mercenary standpoint, a city with five million people is a lot more promising than a city with 1.5 million people that’s relatively poorer to boot.
NFL expansion’s different from any other major league because the league derives most of its cash from national TV deals and none from local. Consequently, from a league benefit standpoint (obviously, you can’t do jack unless there’s an ownership group lined up) you need to either find untapped markets, or exploit markets that might have unused potential. So assuming that
I’d suggest:
Toronto, unless the Bills move there; if the Bills move there, Montreal
San Antonio OR Austin OR Oklahoma City
Salt Lake City OR Las Vegas
Los Angeles
If you want four more teams:
Northern Virginia
Either San Antonio/Austin OR OKC, whichever you didn’t do first
Portland
Vegas or SLC, whichever you didn’t do before
The division structure with 32 teams is pretty good, so it’s hard to see how they’d expand by a single team, or even 2 or 3. I wonder how strong the idea of having international teams is at the league? Maybe the next bit of expansion will be 4 euro teams and 4 asian teams, who knows.
Two birds with one stone: The Los Angeles [expansion team]s of Las Vegas. They’ll never know!
Does anyone seriously want the regular season to expand by two games? I don’t like this as I can see having more meaningless end of season games. Would a 15-0 Patriots team go all out with **3 ** regular season games to go? It was one thing for the Pats to play hard against the Giants since the playoffs were coming up shortly. With the playoffs a month away, the Pats would be fielding their backups after the first quarter, just like a preseason game.
As a Bills fan, that’s why I’m afraid the move will come sooner or later. Buffalo has a long football history and from everything I’ve seen, they love the team - but ask a Supersonics fan how much that’s worth.
But fewer meaningless ones at the beginning.
An idea I’ve heard for expanding the schedule is to drop a preseason game and add a neutral site game for every team. This way the league can get their international games without anyone losing a home game, and cities without teams can get to see live games once in a while.
True, but the preseason games are announced as meaningless. If you buy a ticket to a preseason game, you know what you’re getting.
Also, the NFL loves starting the season right after Labor Day. Everyone is back from vacation. If you start in August, you’re looking at lower ratings as well as bumping against the Olympics and a convention every 4 years.
If you start right after Labor Day with two extra games, you’ll push the Super Bow into late February or even early March. I doubt the NFL would eliminate the hype week in between the conference championships and the Super Bowl.
What if you’re a season ticket holder? My understanding was that you get charged for the meaningless preseason games as part of your package.
Sure you do. That’s just a cost of the season tickets you have to eat. I figure if I buy season tickets for 100 dollars a game, I’m paying 800 for the regular season and 200 for the preseason games. I’d figure I’m actually paying $125 per game for the 8 games I want to see. You can give away the preseason game tickets or go for the first half and leave early.
I like the concept but I just don’t quite see how it’s a practical long term situation. The Bears playing in Notre Dame Stadium and would be great but there’ll be a lot of pissing and moaning when teams pop up into one anothers “fan sphere”. For example, do the Cowboys or Cardinals get to play in Mexico City and Albuquerque? I don’t see the NFL making a change that only survives for a few years unless it sees it as the only practical way to make international in roads.
I can’t think of many franchise relocations that were the result of a lack of fan interest. The vast majority of franchise relocations were due to ownership getting better deals elsewhere.
Why did the Browns 1.0 leave Cleveland? Because Baltimore offered a sweetheart stadium deal. Why did the Colts leave Baltimore? Sweetheart stadium deal. Why are the Sonics probably leaving Seattle? Because the owner’s from Oklahoma City and Seattle wouldn’t give him half a billion dollars to build a new arena. That’s also why the Braves left Milwaukee for Atlanta. That’s why the Raiders left Oakland for LA, and then went back again. The Cardinals had just as much support in St. Louis as they do in Phoenix, but Phoenix offered the lucre. Shit, that’s why the Expos left Montreal; had the city and province given them a shiny new stadium they’d still be in Montreal, but they told them to go to hell, so they went to Washington, which is close enough.
There ARE cases of franchises relocating because the market just can’t generate interest. Winnipeg and Quebec City might be just a bit too small for the NHL. The Atlanta Flames moved to Calgary largely because there weren’t any hockey fans in Georgia. The Brooklyn Dodgers saw a tremendous decrease in attendance in the 1950s and nearly doubled it by moving to the LA market; the Giants were also struggling. In their last year the Giants ranked dead last in the National League in attendance; remember, this is a team that played in Manhattan.
I think the Bills are one of the latter cases. Buffalo fans are hard core fans, but that’s an awfully thin market. Upstate and western New York is not an economically active region, to put it politely, and Buffalo today is actually SMALLER than it was forty years ago. The motivation to move them to Toronto is obvious; the city of Toronto is eight times more populous than the City of Buffalo, and the metropolitan region is about six times bigger. Toronto has suburbs that are bigger than the City of Buffalo. On top of that, the economic conditions in and around Toronto are a lot more advantageous. It’s horrible if you’re a Buffalo fan, and I would never wish upon them the agony of losing their beloved team, but it’s difficult to deny that there’s a lot more fans and companies who’ll buy tickets if you move up the QEW.
It would realy suck, but Buffalo would probably be the only recorded relocation that would allow it’s fans to still be season ticket holders and commute to games. Certainly not ideal but I’d have to think that its better than the Bills ending up in LA.
I hope this isn’t too much a hijack, but I’ve always had a question about the last 4 expansion teams.
The Panthers and Jaguars had very early success. Both made it to their conference championship games in their second year.
The Browns and especially the Texans have not had this type of success (putting it mildly). What did they do wrong that Carolina/Jacksonville did correctly?
Interesting point. It would be nice if they would allocate a block of seasons tickets to be offered to existing Bills ticketholders on a right of first refusal.