Which sports division/conference has the perfect alignment?

[Red Comet]

On 9/23/2019 at 4:58 AM, packerfan21396 said:

Was curious about Power 5 college football divisions, so I made this one:

(ACC: teals, Big 12: red, Big Ten: gray/black, Pac-12: blues, SEC: yellow/orange)

 

So basically, Power 5 has nice in-conference division separation for every conference except the ACC, but there's a whole lot of conference overlap.  The best groupings and division name accuracy goes to the Big Ten, in my opinion.

 

West and East is a bit dull but its still miles better than Legends or Leaders or whatever the hell they started out with. 

[leopard88]

13 hours ago, NicDB said:

A place in on the Great Lakes, Ohio Valley, or the Eastern Seaboard (New Jersey on through Maryland) with a history and legacy of heavy industry, neighborhood taverns, and union politics?  Basically, if you could imagine a Bruce Springsteen video taking place there, it's blue collar.

I'll grant you, it's an antiquated term that refers to a city's past more than its present.  Even the mayor of Milwaukee quipped 15 years ago that "Laverne and Shirley don't live here anymore. (He was right to assume no one watched the LA episodes.) And anyone claiming any team's fanbase is "blue collar" these days is lazy at best, and a moron at worst.  But I don't think it's incorrect to say the AFC North cities share a socioeconomic history with each other that wouldn't be the case with Indianapolis (regardless of my desire to have the Colts replace the Ravens).
 

 

I think this is as good a description of "blue collar town" as is likely to exist . . . including the disclaimer in the second paragraph.

 

Also, I grew up in the 70s and had fully repressed all memories of the Laverne & Shirley California years . . . until now.

 

4 minutes ago, Red Comet said:

 

West and East is a bit dull but its still miles better than Legends or Leaders or whatever the hell they started out with. 

 

If nothing else, it makes it easier to remember which teams are in which division.

 

Even when Maryland was in the ACC, I had no ideas which teams were in the Atlantic and Coastal Divisions . . . and still don't.

[pianoknight]

The Big 8

 

[packerfan21396]

The Big Ten

[The_Admiral]

4 hours ago, McCarthy said:

The entire AFC South feels like a team in the wrong division. That might be the worst division in sports. The Colts fans I talked to in Indianapolis last year said they don't feel like they have a division rival because they automatically won the division for like 10 years there, but they like being in the division because the other 3 teams are sh***y more often than not. I'd take that deal too. 

 

It's the only AFC division that didn't carry four teams over from a five-team division, and three of the teams didn't start until 1995, 1997 or 1998 or 1999 depending on how you want to look at it, and 2002. And part of it is that Nashville, Jacksonville, and Indianapolis don't feel like natural fits for anything.

[MadmanLA]

Besides keeping the Cowboys in the NFC East to preserve their rivalries with those other teams when divisional realignment came in '02, there's also the market sizes of the four teams in that division--all of them top-ten TV markets, and a big reason why Fox pays a higher rate for their Sunday afternoon games than what CBS pays for theirs.  Every top-15 TV DMA except Oakland/San Francisco, Houston, and Boston is represented by a NFC team, and once the Raiders go to Las Vegas next year, it'll be just the other two cities.  In contrast to CBS, they have only five AFC markets among the top-15, and three of the markets (again, it'll be down to two next year) is shared with a NFC team.

 

I also echo the Ravens to the East, Dolphins to the South, and the Colts to the North...in the NFC, just swap the Cowboys and Panthers.  With the Rams moving back here to Los Angeles, it actually made the NFC West geographically-perfect, perhaps next to the NFC North.

[goalieboy82]

SEC

 

[MilSox]

6 hours ago, MadmanLA said:

Besides keeping the Cowboys in the NFC East to preserve their rivalries with those other teams when divisional realignment came in '02, there's also the market sizes of the four teams in that division--all of them top-ten TV markets, and a big reason why Fox pays a higher rate for their Sunday afternoon games than what CBS pays for theirs.  Every top-15 TV DMA except Oakland/San Francisco, Houston, and Boston is represented by a NFC team, and once the Raiders go to Las Vegas next year, it'll be just the other two cities.  In contrast to CBS, they have only five AFC markets among the top-15, and three of the markets (again, it'll be down to two next year) is shared with a NFC team.

 

I also echo the Ravens to the East, Dolphins to the South, and the Colts to the North...in the NFC, just swap the Cowboys and Panthers.  With the Rams moving back here to Los Angeles, it actually made the NFC West geographically-perfect, perhaps next to the NFC North.

I'm with you on everything but that.  Carolina in the East would be less OCD, but they wouldn't stand out like any less of a sore thumb in that division.

If I were in charge of the alignments back in 1970, I would have put Dallas in the West, St. Louis in the Central, and Atlanta (and eventually Tampa Bay) in the East.  But what's done is done, and the Cowboys have become the biggest rival of every other team in the East, regardless of their record in any given year.  Unlike the AFC, it really wouldn't make sense for Dallas to be anywhere but where they are now. 

[sc49erfan15]

The only real things geographically "wrong" with the NFL alignment are the Cowboys in the NFC East, the Dolphins in the AFC East, and the fact that the AFC West spans 3 time zones.

 

All 3 get an easy pass due to historical rivalries - breaking any of those up would be a bad move. 

 

Geography is least important to NFL divisions because games are only played once a week. It's not like the Cowboys are having to go to New York or the Bills to Miami 10 times a season.

[The_Admiral]

Yeah, I don't get why people freak out about the Dolphins. Miami/SoFla is functionally an exclave of the Northeast, anyway. Drive north till you get to a town called, no foolin', Yeehaw Junction, and you'll see it for yourself. 

 

Question: which division would you consider the successor of the old NFC West? the actual West, or the South? 75% of the South was the NFC West, while only 50% of the current West was there before realignment.

[SFGiants58]

5 minutes ago, the admiral said:

Question: which division would you consider the successor of the old NFC West? the actual West, or the South? 75% of the South was the NFC West, while only 50% of the current West was there before realignment.

 

Given that the Niners spent so much time at the top of the old NFC West and the Rams' success in the '70s, I'm tempted to say that the current West is the successor. The Falcons and Saints were mediocre-to-terrible (with a few decent runs) during that old alignment, while the Panthers barely played in the old setup.

[The_Admiral]

Yeah, I'm inclined to answer that way, too, just threw it out there owing to the weirdness of the Panthers, Falcons, and Saints all in the West together. Surprised the league never insisted on a Cardinals-Panthers flip in '95, I guess the Bidwills really really needed those Dallas games.

[Red Wolf]

19 hours ago, leopard88 said:

Even when Maryland was in the ACC, I had no ideas which teams were in the Atlantic and Coastal Divisions . . . and still don't.

 

I know that Florida State and Clemson are in one division and Miami is in the other, and that's the extent of my knowledge of ACC divisions. I guess geographically you could have done North vs. South but the South would be OP (Clemson, Florida State, and Miami vs. the basketball schools).

[pianoknight]

4 hours ago, Red Wolf said:

 

I know that Florida State and Clemson are in one division and Miami is in the other, and that's the extent of my knowledge of ACC divisions. I guess geographically you could have done North vs. South but the South would be OP (Clemson, Florida State, and Miami vs. the basketball schools).

 

That's cyclical, though. Boston College and Virginia Tech have had periods of dominance and there have been times when Clemson fell off the map. 

[leopard88]

4 hours ago, Red Wolf said:

 

I know that Florida State and Clemson are in one division and Miami is in the other, and that's the extent of my knowledge of ACC divisions. I guess geographically you could have done North vs. South but the South would be OP (Clemson, Florida State, and Miami vs. the basketball schools).

 

If memory serves me, the alignment was originally meant to keep Florida State and Miami in separate divisions. While the B1G is a little lopsided, I think it has shown that it is okay to have (temporarily?) unbalanced divisions to help the geography make sense and allow casual fans to remember which schools are in which division.  The SEC has been unbalanced in the past too, but the geography has made sense (Missouri in the East notwithstanding).

[Luigi74]

4 hours ago, leopard88 said:

 

If memory serves me, the alignment was originally meant to keep Florida State and Miami in separate divisions. While the B1G is a little lopsided, I think it has shown that it is okay to have (temporarily?) unbalanced divisions to help the geography make sense and allow casual fans to remember which schools are in which division.  The SEC has been unbalanced in the past too, but the geography has made sense (Missouri in the East notwithstanding).

I never understood why they wanted FSU and Miami in separate divisions but still playing against each other yearly during the regular season. It was still the BCS era when the ACC expanded to 12 and it seems like those two playing twice would hurt their chances at the BCS Championship Game or BCS at-large bid.

 

Once the ACC expanded to 14 & replaced Maryland with Louisville they should have moved teams around to get the four North Carolina schools in the same division, that North Carolina and Wake Forest played each other non-conference this year is crazy.

 

[TBGKon]

36 minutes ago, ltp74 said:

I never understood why they wanted FSU and Miami in separate divisions but still playing against each other yearly during the regular season. It was still the BCS era when the ACC expanded to 12 and it seems like those two playing twice would hurt their chances at the BCS Championship Game or BCS at-large bid.

 

Once the ACC expanded to 14 & replaced Maryland with Louisville they should have moved teams around to get the four North Carolina schools in the same division, that North Carolina and Wake Forest played each other non-conference this year is crazy.

 

I think they really wanted to have FSU-Miami in the conference championship game, and to date this has yet to happen and its been 14 years

[MilSox]

16 hours ago, sc49erfan15 said:

The only real things geographically "wrong" with the NFL alignment are the Cowboys in the NFC East, the Dolphins in the AFC East, and the fact that the AFC West spans 3 time zones.

 

All 3 get an easy pass due to historical rivalries - breaking any of those up would be a bad move. 

 

Geography is least important to NFL divisions because games are only played once a week. It's not like the Cowboys are having to go to New York or the Bills to Miami 10 times a season.

 

Totally agree. Not to mention the AFC West upholds the legacy of the AFL West with the exact same alignment which originally stood for everything west of the Mississippi.

[BBTV]

What I'm learning from this is that it kinda sucks to be a sports fan in Montana or the Dakotas.

[Red Wolf]

12 hours ago, leopard88 said:

 

If memory serves me, the alignment was originally meant to keep Florida State and Miami in separate divisions. While the B1G is a little lopsided, I think it has shown that it is okay to have (temporarily?) unbalanced divisions to help the geography make sense and allow casual fans to remember which schools are in which division.  The SEC has been unbalanced in the past too, but the geography has made sense (Missouri in the East notwithstanding).

 

The ACC definitely did it the way they did to keep the Florida schools apart so that they could potentially have them face off in the championship game. The Big Ten did the same thing with the initial Leaders and Legends alignment by having Ohio State and Michigan on opposite sides.

 

12 hours ago, pianoknight said:

 

That's cyclical, though. Boston College and Virginia Tech have had periods of dominance and there have been times when Clemson fell off the map. 

 

I think the ceiling on the hypothetical South teams would be so much higher than a hypothetical North. The same was true of the old Big XII alignment, but an ACC North wouldn't have any programs of the caliber of Nebraska. But hey, Wake Forest won an ACC Championship game once, so they may as well go to a geographic alignment. That's what I always did on NCAA Football.