A Modest Proposal, Part II

This post is a continuation of my proposal for improving the NFL which I started three weeks ago. In that post, I suggested that the two legacy conferences be eliminated. Of course, that suggestion would be potentially controversial. It would be a major change and would have multiple repercussions in other aspects of how the league operates.

2. Realignment

Obviously, eliminating the two conferences is in itself a major change to how the teams are aligned. In my basic proposal, the directional divisions are simply combined, and the current alignment of those divisions would be maintained. However, some alternate configurations could be desirable. One suggestion that I have, even in the current arrangement of NFL conferences and divisions, would be to correct some geographical irregularities by rotating Indianapolis north, Baltimore east, and Miami south.

West Division	North Division	South Division	East Division
Arizona Denver Kansas City Oakland San Diego San Francisco Seattle St. Louis	Chicago Cincinnati Cleveland Detroit Green Bay Indianapolis Minnesota Pittsburgh	Atlanta Carolina Houston Jacksonville Miami New Orleans Tampa Bay Tennessee	Baltimore Buffalo Dallas New England New York Giants New York Jets Philadelphia Washington

Of course, this still leaves the lunacy of centrally-located Dallas being in the East Division, but I do not think that the NFL is really prepared to change the strong rivalries of the NFC East.

3. Relocation

One benefit of having larger divisions is that the arrangement would be better suited to handling a possible relocation of one of the 32 teams. The current hot topic in possible team movements is the Jacksonville Jaguars moving to the west coast to occupy a new stadium currently under consideration in the Los Angeles area. Under the current configuration, realigning teams to handle that possibility would probably involve teams switching conferences. The simplest suggestion would be to swap the Jags and the St. Louis Rams. Under my proposal, that simple suggestion makes much more sense because the Rams would then be reunited with Atlanta, New Orleans and Carolina from the old NFC West.

West Division	North Division	South Division	East Division
Arizona Denver Kansas City LA Jaguars Oakland San Diego San Francisco Seattle	Chicago Cincinnati Cleveland Detroit Green Bay Indianapolis Minnesota Pittsburgh	Atlanta Carolina Houston Miami New Orleans St. Louis Tampa Bay Tennessee	Baltimore Buffalo Dallas New England New York Giants New York Jets Philadelphia Washington

4. Regular Season Schedule

Another area where my proposal would have a major impact is the regular season schedule. I think that the current 16-game regular season is perfectly balanced. Each team plays the other three teams in its division twice, once at home and once away. Also on the schedule are four teams from a division in the other conference, four teams from another division in the same conference, and two teams from the other two divisions in the same conference that finished in the same place in their division. Therefore, the schedule for each team includes four teams that finished the previous season first in their division, four teams that were second, four that were third, and four that were fourth.

Under my proposal, each team's schedule would still be balanced. Each team would play 14 divisional games by playing each of the other seven teams in its division twice, once at home and once away. The remaining two games would be against teams from two of the other divisions that finished in the same place in their division. Another suggestion would be to go with a current proposal to drop two preseason games and add a 17th regular season game. With a 17-game regular season, there would be 14 divisional games plus a game each versus the team from the other three divisions that finished in the same place.

In the third part of my proposal, I will tackle changes to the NFL postseason and the Pro Bowl.