Offseason Discussion Expansion and Movement
Offseason Discussion: Expansion and Movement Football Outsiders
IS IT IMPORTANT TO HAVE A TEAM IN LOS ANGELES?
IF A TEAM WERE TO MOVE TO LOS ANGELES, WHICH TEAM SHOULD GO?
WHAT CITIES BESIDES (OR INSTEAD OF) LOS ANGELES DO YOU THINK SHOULD GET NFL TEAMS IF TEAMS MOVED OR THE LEAGUE EXPANDED? I'll launch the discussion with my own thoughts. I lived in Orange County until I was 13 and although I wasn't a huge football fan back then, I remember when L.A. had the Raiders and the Rams and frankly it is a little strange to think that there isn't a team in a city that big. But the NFL seems to be doing fine without Los Angeles and at this point, to be frank, Los Angeles doesn't seem to care much about the NFL. I think at this point half the teams in the league have been rumored to be headed to Los Angeles depending on whether their current cities feel like offering favorable real estate deals: San Diego, New Orleans, Minnesota, Indianapolis, that's just to name a few. I don't want to see any teams move. The NFL is one the league in America where you can easily argue that every single team has a strong local fanbase and economic support. So if we want to move to Los Angeles, and other cities, I favor NFL expansion. I know the classic argument against expansion, that it would water down play, but I don't really see it. Some of you may remember a Bill James article from the 1988 Abstract in which he stated that major league baseball could realistically expand to 200 teams and within ten years the level of play would be roughly the same as before. I don't know if I would go quite that far, but America supports over 100 top shelf NCAA football teams that turn over their rosters completely every four years and surely among all those players, not to mention the rest of college football, there would be enough players to support four or even eventually eight more teams. Any actual drop in the quality of play would probably less noticeable in the NFL than in the other major sports leagues because the NFL is so much less dependent on the star system. The usual complaint about expansion is that you end up with more role players and fewer stars on each team, but that would give you more teams like the Carolina Panthers and New England Patriots, which doesn't really seem to be such a bad idea. NFL football is the most popular sport in the country and there are plenty of cities that would love to have their own NFL teams. Birmingham, for example, has supported teams in the XFL, USFL, and WLAF. (Remember the waffle? Good times, good times.) The Ohio Glory, based in Columbus, averaged more than 30,000 fans a game during its one season in the WLAF, and a Columbus team would slide right into the AFC North with three built-in rivalries (although nobody in Columbus cares about Baltimore). You could stick a team in Toronto, though that would annoy the CFL (and probably the Buffalo Bills) to no end. And don't tell me that, given the league's tacit approval of both gambling and fantasy football, a team in Las Vegas wouldn't be a huge moneymaker. You might argue that some of these markets are college football towns that would not fully support NFL teams that competed with the Crimson Tide or Buckeyes. I would argue, instead, that these markets are football-crazy anyway and could easily sell out eight NFL home games along with college Saturdays and high school Fridays. (And if you are worried about competing with major college squads, well, we haven't gotten to Sacramento, San Antonio, or Norfolk yet...) Expansion would also allow the league to enact some of those proposals that have been floating around for a few years and would make more sense with more teams. With an expanded NFL, the people who want more teams in the playoffs could get their wish without watering down the regular season any further. The league could also sell another prime-time package (like the oft-rumored weekly Thursday night proposal for ESPN) without angering FOX and CBS by diluting the quality of Sunday afternoon games. The league could even schedule two games on Sunday or even Monday nights, allowing ABC/ESPN to choose the game with better playoff ramifications for national broadcast later in the season as long as they still broadcast the second game to the home markets of those two teams. One admitted problem with expansion is that the league is structured in an almost perfect fashion at this point, with 32 teams, and adding teams would mess that up. I think that's a minimal problem as long as the league doesn't do something stupid like play another year with an odd number of teams so every week has to have at least one team on bye. I'll open up the floor now. Tune in after Memorial Day for more fun Football Outsiders articles, including Mark Hutson's sequel to his column on the worst teams of all time -- this time spotlighting the best teams of all time. If you would like to suggest a weekly offseason discussion thread, go ahead and email it to me at . I'll also mention that if you see a good NFL article somewhere that you think will spawn discussion, and you would like to suggest we add it to the article blog, you can email that to us as well. I've asked Patrick to handle that stuff so you can send it to . Not just any old "backup offensive lineman signs with team X" article, but something really interesting that we may have missed. -- Aaron
May 26, 2004, 1:54 pm ET This week's offseason discussion thread is inspired by the 164,327th article about the NFL . Consider this an open thread to discuss team movement and the possibility of NFL expansion, including questions like: DO YOU THINK THE NFL SHOULD CONSIDER EXPANSION AGAIN?
IS IT IMPORTANT TO HAVE A TEAM IN LOS ANGELES?
IF A TEAM WERE TO MOVE TO LOS ANGELES, WHICH TEAM SHOULD GO?
WHAT CITIES BESIDES (OR INSTEAD OF) LOS ANGELES DO YOU THINK SHOULD GET NFL TEAMS IF TEAMS MOVED OR THE LEAGUE EXPANDED? I'll launch the discussion with my own thoughts. I lived in Orange County until I was 13 and although I wasn't a huge football fan back then, I remember when L.A. had the Raiders and the Rams and frankly it is a little strange to think that there isn't a team in a city that big. But the NFL seems to be doing fine without Los Angeles and at this point, to be frank, Los Angeles doesn't seem to care much about the NFL. I think at this point half the teams in the league have been rumored to be headed to Los Angeles depending on whether their current cities feel like offering favorable real estate deals: San Diego, New Orleans, Minnesota, Indianapolis, that's just to name a few. I don't want to see any teams move. The NFL is one the league in America where you can easily argue that every single team has a strong local fanbase and economic support. So if we want to move to Los Angeles, and other cities, I favor NFL expansion. I know the classic argument against expansion, that it would water down play, but I don't really see it. Some of you may remember a Bill James article from the 1988 Abstract in which he stated that major league baseball could realistically expand to 200 teams and within ten years the level of play would be roughly the same as before. I don't know if I would go quite that far, but America supports over 100 top shelf NCAA football teams that turn over their rosters completely every four years and surely among all those players, not to mention the rest of college football, there would be enough players to support four or even eventually eight more teams. Any actual drop in the quality of play would probably less noticeable in the NFL than in the other major sports leagues because the NFL is so much less dependent on the star system. The usual complaint about expansion is that you end up with more role players and fewer stars on each team, but that would give you more teams like the Carolina Panthers and New England Patriots, which doesn't really seem to be such a bad idea. NFL football is the most popular sport in the country and there are plenty of cities that would love to have their own NFL teams. Birmingham, for example, has supported teams in the XFL, USFL, and WLAF. (Remember the waffle? Good times, good times.) The Ohio Glory, based in Columbus, averaged more than 30,000 fans a game during its one season in the WLAF, and a Columbus team would slide right into the AFC North with three built-in rivalries (although nobody in Columbus cares about Baltimore). You could stick a team in Toronto, though that would annoy the CFL (and probably the Buffalo Bills) to no end. And don't tell me that, given the league's tacit approval of both gambling and fantasy football, a team in Las Vegas wouldn't be a huge moneymaker. You might argue that some of these markets are college football towns that would not fully support NFL teams that competed with the Crimson Tide or Buckeyes. I would argue, instead, that these markets are football-crazy anyway and could easily sell out eight NFL home games along with college Saturdays and high school Fridays. (And if you are worried about competing with major college squads, well, we haven't gotten to Sacramento, San Antonio, or Norfolk yet...) Expansion would also allow the league to enact some of those proposals that have been floating around for a few years and would make more sense with more teams. With an expanded NFL, the people who want more teams in the playoffs could get their wish without watering down the regular season any further. The league could also sell another prime-time package (like the oft-rumored weekly Thursday night proposal for ESPN) without angering FOX and CBS by diluting the quality of Sunday afternoon games. The league could even schedule two games on Sunday or even Monday nights, allowing ABC/ESPN to choose the game with better playoff ramifications for national broadcast later in the season as long as they still broadcast the second game to the home markets of those two teams. One admitted problem with expansion is that the league is structured in an almost perfect fashion at this point, with 32 teams, and adding teams would mess that up. I think that's a minimal problem as long as the league doesn't do something stupid like play another year with an odd number of teams so every week has to have at least one team on bye. I'll open up the floor now. Tune in after Memorial Day for more fun Football Outsiders articles, including Mark Hutson's sequel to his column on the worst teams of all time -- this time spotlighting the best teams of all time. If you would like to suggest a weekly offseason discussion thread, go ahead and email it to me at . I'll also mention that if you see a good NFL article somewhere that you think will spawn discussion, and you would like to suggest we add it to the article blog, you can email that to us as well. I've asked Patrick to handle that stuff so you can send it to . Not just any old "backup offensive lineman signs with team X" article, but something really interesting that we may have missed. -- Aaron