Love and marriage, love and marriage
They go together like a horse and carriage
This I tell you, brother
You can't have one without the other
So sang Frank Sinatra way back in 1955 — and the same thing applies, most of the time at least, to expansion and realignment in sports.
It started in 1967 in the pre-merger NFL, when the addition of the New Orleans Saints as an expansion team resulted in the league's realignment into four four-team divisions, all of whose names began with the letter "C" — Capitol, Century, Central, and Coastal.
Three years later, the NFL and the AFL became the NFC and the AFC, respectively, with the NFL's Colts, Browns and Steelers moving to the AFC, to give each of the new conferences 13 teams each (prior to that, the NFL had an Eastern Conference and a Western Conference from 1953 through 1969 — something that the NBA had since 1950).
Then, in 1969, four expansion teams were added to Major League Baseball, and the NL and the AL were both split up into two six-team divisions.
Just six months after that it was the NBA's turn, with the Buffalo Braves (now the Los Angeles Clippers after a six-year sojourn in San Diego), Cleveland Cavaliers (derisively nicknamed the "Cadavers" when Ted Stepien, dubbed "Deep Septank" by New York Post basketball columnist Peter Vecsey, owned the team), and Portland Trail Blazers going in as expansion teams, and "the Association" realigning from two divisions to four (Houston was also going to get a new team as well, but the franchise's would-be owners could not come up with the necessary $750,000 down payment on the required $3.7 million entrance fee in time for the 1970 NBA expansion draft; these respective figures would be approximately $6.1 million and $30.3 million today).
In the summer of 1974, the piece de resistance when it comes to "radical realignment" came courtesy of the NHL, whose realignment from two to four divisions included the breakup of definitely hockey's if not all of sports' most heated rivalries — the New York Rangers vs. the Boston Bruins: had the TV Parental Guidelines existed in the late 1960s and early 1970s, every Rangers-Bruins game would have been rated TV-MA because of the incessant violence therein (fighting, etc.) — and the Bruins and the then-California Golden Seals in the same division? Who came up with that idea?
And when pundits talk about a team having a "tough schedule," they generally refer to how good the team's opponents are — or at least were the season before. But a schedule can also be tough — or easy — on the basis of travel mileage; and just to cite one example, the NFC North (and to a lesser extent, the AFC North) has a very easy travel schedule. On the other side of the travel mileage coin, forcing the Giants, Eagles and Commanders to make 1,500-mile trips to Dallas every year is grossly unfair, as is forcing the Patriots, Bills, and Jets to make 1,000+-mile trips to Miami every year.
The NFL is long overdue to expand, not having done so since 2002, and Roger Goodell is just itchin' to add an 18th game to the regular-season schedule. These goals can be combined with realignment to produce three six-team divisions in each conference. One plausible outcome is the following:
EASTERN CONFERENCE
Atlantic Division
Baltimore
New England
N.Y. Giants
N.Y. Jets
Philadelphia
Washington
Central Division
Buffalo
Cincinnati
Cleveland
Columbus*
Indianapolis
Pittsburgh
Southeast Division
Atlanta
Carolina
Jacksonville
Miami
Tampa Bay
Tennessee
WESTERN CONFERENCE
Midwest Division
Chicago
Detroit
Green Bay
Kansas City
Minnesota
St. Louis*
Southwest Division
Dallas
Denver
Houston
New Orleans
Oklahoma City*
San Antonio*
Pacific Division
Arizona
Las Vegas
L.A. Chargers
L.A. Rams
San Francisco
Seattle
*Denotes expansion team
In Year 1, the first two expansion teams are added, one into each conference, and the schedule remains at 17 games in both Year 1 and Year 2, with the two new teams playing each other once and all 16 existing teams from their own conference once (the Buccaneers and Seahawks did this in both 1976 and 1977), with the two new teams switching conferences in Year 2 (Tampa Bay and Seattle also did this).
In Year 3, the 35th and 36th teams join the league, and the schedule goes to 18 games, with the above divisional realignment then taking effect.
In addition to every team playing their division rivals twice each, the rest of every team's schedule can be as follows:
*Teams that did not play each other in interconference play in Years 1, 2, and 3 play each other in Years 4, 5, and 6; e.g., if Pittsburgh and Green Bay did not play each other in Years 1, 2 or 3, they will play each other in weeks 4, 5 or 6.
In Years 7, 8, and 9, interconference pairings will revert to the format observed in Years 1, 2, and 3.
(Having teams in different conferences only play each other every six years is unfortunate, but this is what has to happen as a league "overexpands.")
If the expansion teams turn out to be different from those listed above, a London team can, for example, always go into the Atlantic Division, with Baltimore in the Central Division; and a Mexico City team can always replace San Antonio or Oklahoma City in the Southwest Division — also, remember that the city of St. Louis has already won a lawsuit against the NFL.
Since the schedule will be far more division-based than the current schedule, then so should the playoff format be, with, in each conference, the three first-place teams earning the 1, 2, and 3 seeds, the three second-place teams the 4, 5, and 6 seeds, and two wild card teams, the 7 and 8 seeds in an expanded playoff field; but in order for a fourth-place division finisher to make the playoffs, they must finish with an outright better record than both of the two third-place teams in the other two divisions within the same conference — a tie is no good (the CFL observes the same procedure).
And not for nothing, but four more teams means that the Super Bowl champion will henceforth receive the 36th overall pick in the ensuing draft instead of the 32nd.
Doesn't this foster the "competitive balance" that the owners claim to crave?
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