I have long been a fan of NFL realignment. When I was in college in the late 90s, I would dream up plans of switching the teams around, now that Jacksonville and Carolina had teams that made little sense in the divisions that they were put into. Once the Browns became the Ravens, and then the New Browns came into being, the league announced that there would be real realignment starting in 2002 with the expansion Texans, and a world of possibilities opened up. Sadly though, the changes were luke warm, and ended up hurting the Dolphins more than they helped them.

Fast forward to today, and 2019 will be the 18th consecutive season under the current setup, which is the longest that the league has ever gone without moving teams around in divisions, adding franchises, or changing the playoff structure. 2019 will be the NFL's 100th season, full of pomp and celebration, and memories of everything that has come to this point, which will be great. But with Oakland's move to Las Vegas in 2020, I see the 101st season as the perfect time to push the reset button and massively change how the whole thing is structured.

#1. I would do away with the AFC and the NFC, and instead put the teams into four divisions of eight teams each, based mostly on geography.

#2. The idea of the TV networks as sole broadcasters of either the AFC or NFC is already on the way out. CBS and FOX have been trading games for a few years now, and there is real talk that the whole system will be scrapped eventually. Combine this with the league's desire to make all games available to stream as soon as 2020, and possibly cutting ties with DirecTV, and this is the perfect time to just say that any game could be on any network, without worrying about where the teams are organized.

#3. I would change the playoff structure so that the four new division winners are seeded 1-4, with a first round bye. And then the remaining eight teams would come from whatever teams had the next eight best records, regardless of division. The 5-8 seeds would host the first round games, and then the winners of those matchups would face the division winners, with the lowest remaining seeds facing the highest.

Playoff tiebreakers would go of course first with best record, and then move onto head to head. But if the teams didn't face one another, I would make the next tiebreaker which team had gone the longest since they had earned that seed. Common opponents would always either be zero, or almost exactly the same, based on the new setup, so that rules it out as a viable choice.

#4. All games in Weeks 16 & 17 are played against teams within the same division. This both ensures that clubs are facing one another head to head with division titles on the line and that teams in warm weather climates aren't forced to go on the road in winter conditions in the regular season very often.

#5. All sixteen Thursday night football matchups, including Week 1 with the Super Bowl winner hosting, and Thanksgiving night, are divisional games. Also, every team would face their divisional opponents once home and once away over a fourteen year plan, ensuring that no team is given either favoritism or the short stick in this process.

#6. All BYEs will be Weeks 7-10, with an entire division getting the week off together. Divisions would rotate through these weeks, giving all teams an equal chance at the early or late bye every four years.


This is how I would organize the divisions

Southeast

Miami -- Tampa Bay
Jacksonville -- Carolina
Atlanta -- New Orleans
Dallas -- Houston

Northeast

NY Giants -- NY Jets
Buffalo -- New England
Philadelphia -- Washington
Pittsburgh -- Baltimore

Midwest

Green Bay -- Chicago
Minnesota -- Detroit
Cleveland -- Cincinnati
Indianapolis -- Tennessee

Pacific West

LA Rams -- LA Chargers
Arizona -- Las Vegas
Seattle -- San Francisco
Denver -- Kansas City

The teams on the same line would be designated rivals, and would play both home and away every season. Teams would play the other six teams in their division, three home and three away, on an alternating basis, making up half of their schedule. Then, they would play all eight teams from another division, four home and four away, completing the sixteen games for a season, facing every team outside of the division once both home and away every six years. This would allow every team to know every opponent for every season into the future indefinantly.

What do you guys think?

 

Tennessee is definately the hard team to place, and no matter the setup, if I try to cater to the Titans, it usually ends up screwing multiple other teams up, unfortunately. An argument could be made for them either place. However, I felt that a potential twice a year Dallas/Houston rivalry would be a great replacement for the Cowboys traditional foes, while Indy and Tennessee have a long history themselves as rivals that they can maintain.

 

That's intentional. VERY intentional.

I wanted to segregate the cold weather teams away from the warm weather ones during the regular season. In fact, that's always one of my main focuses when I do this. Warm weather and dome teams have an inherrant disadvantage when forced to play in cold, messy weather.

So, let the warm weather teams sort out things among themselves and present their best teams for two of the playoff BYEs, while the cold weather teams do the same. And then the rest could be any combination with the WC round. Under the current system, the cold weather franchises have been way, way too dominant.

 

Cbrad, I have to hand it to you for coming up with an idea that I would have never considered, but its just too out there for me. I think that divisions should be set up with the idea of rivalries between fan bases, not something that should fluctuate all the time. Our current setup is 18 years old, and incorporates many rivalries that are much older. My suggested plan keeps a lot of those. I want to improve it, not just decimate the whole idea.

 

A few teams need to get pruned to make the whole thing work. Dallas is the obvious one. I think that if forced into it, their fans would grow to love a rivalry with Houston.

 

That seems really complicated, man. I really want to keep the 12 team playoff format, and reward the top four regular season records. I think that my suggestion would almost force every team to play their starters in the final weeks of the regular season too, because you can't just coast to a division championship, you're competing against the whole league for playoff positioning.

No AFC and NFC title games. Just the top two remaining seeds host the semi final games (the final four).

 

Oh ok, I was confused after the first time that I read it. Your setup is a lot like mine, just not dependant at all on divisional winners.

I like the divisional setup, because it gives two teams from outside of cold climates two of the top seeds, and playoff home games. What I really want to do is break up the playoff monopoly that the teams in cold climates have had for decades.

 

LOL, thank you man! I love the NFL, and I love organization. My dream would be to work in the league office, making a regular middle class salary, helping with these kinds of things.