NFL Minor League, part 2

Originally published: 5/24/2017

Original post: https://coalm.blogspot.com/2017/05/nfl-minor-league-part-2.html

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.