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Breaking down the NFL divisions, geography style

§ November 22nd, 2009 § Filed under football § Tagged geography, NFL, NFL divisions § 8 Comments

Well. The Broncos are playing the Chargers, and I can’t believe I’m wishing Kyle Orton — Kyle Orton! — were starting for Denver. So…while I am nominally watching the game (Broncos are down 7-0 as I write), allow me to wax practical on the current geographic NFL divisions. Suffice it to say, the current divisions are very geographically inefficient, as you can see below:

Color key: Red = west teams, green = north, blue = south, purple = east

It is ridiculous that Minnesota, Dallas, and Houston are all farther west than St. Louis, yet St. Louis is in the NFC West division. Speaking of Dallas, it’s in the NFC East division, and Miami, the southernmost team, is equally ridiculously grouped with three northeastern teams. And just look at how much travel must be done within the two western conferences as compared to, say, the NFC or AFC North teams.

I’m not saying the geography and resulting travel time matter a great deal, but if it did — say for energy conservation reasons, or just the general fairness of teams having unequal travelling time — what could the divisions look like? Here are a few options:

1. Geographically efficient.

There is no perfect layout, but this is one of the most geographically efficient. (One team in the west sticks out like a sore thumb no matter how you lay it out.)

2. Nice and neat…except the northwest.

3. Preservation
This preserves the idea of North/South/East/West conferences in a way the first option doesn’t, and it also preserves some divisional rivalries, such as DEN-OAK-KC, MIN-GB-CHI, CLE-CIN, WASH-PHIL, BUF-NYJ-NE, and CAR-ATL.

4. Longitude:

If we’re just going by longitude — and I see no reason to do so; this is just for curiosity — this is how it would break down.