Let us not forget the Hawaiians, of the short-lived, forgettable, and not-quite-major 1974-75 World Football League.
Can you imagine the home field advantage a football team from Anchoragewould have? Imagine the Miami Dolphins having to travel 4,000 miles to get there, and then being forced to play in -15 degree weather (a dome would be a travesty, of course). How many games would they have to play before they won one? 20? 50?
When the Nationals or Red Sox played @ HI, they’d start at 1am EST (Midnight if HI played at 6 local). I’d imagine that current 10pm west coast starts are bad enough. “East coast media bias” would be more obvious than ever.
Seems like you’d need more travel days than the schedule could allow.
The University of Hawaii plays Division-I football, so we already have a good case study. Over the last three seasons, the Warriors were 20-4 at home, 10-6 on the road. Their opponents have a harder time adjusting to the travel than they do.
The NCAA used to have to bribe teams to schedule games in Hawaii – they’d get to play 12 games instead of 11 (and would usually schedule the 12th as an extra home game against some crappy team simply to goose revenue).
I’m not even sure how they would handle rainouts. Can you imagine some crazy scheduling which would have a team in the pennant race flying from the East Coast to HI and then back to the East Coast just to make up a rained out