I’ve had this wild take on the NFL for years. They’re called the National Football League, and never mind that what they call football, the rest of the world doesn’t recognise and what they call football, the Americans call soccer (association football; the slang soccer was actually not coined in America, but whatever).
So the way it is now, an American football team, like the Seattle Seahawks, which won the Super Bowl this year, back in February, are based out of the US state of Washington, and that’s fine, but most of their players were not born, raised, or trained in the state of Washington. They come from all over. But they are not Washingtonians, nor are they required to be.
So here’s how I’d change American Football.
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Each state gets one team, and one team only. It can be based in the capital, the largest city, or a place that is justified as being culturally significant to the state.
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Every player on the team, plus the coaches, managers, and whatnot, must have been born, raised, and trained in that state. I’m not 100% sure it matters they were born there, but they should have done most of their schooling there and been trained there. Anywhere in the state is good, not just the city where the team is based out of. If you moved states in high school you don’t get to play professionally. Sorry, them’s the breaks.
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The team should be a point of pride for the state. In many cases that’s how it currently works, but I’d like to see more people supporting the local team because everyone in your state’s team came from your state. This does make more sense in the smaller northeastern states than the larger southwestern ones, but I think it still fits. I think Texas could still all get behind one team, because Texas kind of has that identity that, even though you have Texans in one part who are very different from Texans in another part, they’re still all proud Texans, so I think they’d all rally behind the same team, if they had one.
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Likewise to the first point, the team should be called something relevant to the state. The 49ers, in California, work because the gold rush was an important part of that state’s history. State bird, state animal, things like that would be valid choices, and of course anything culturally relevant, but especially so if no other state can easily claim it. For example, cowboys aren’t unique to Texas, though Texas might have the best claim. Oilers is another team from Texas and is also good. But what TF is a Seahawk? Also, Rams, Lions, Bears, and Dolphins (oh, and Patriots) are everywhere. So those would be out. Now if Florida wants to call their team the Gators, that would fit for two reasons: one, the gators that live there, and two, Gatorade which, IIRC, was first made or sold there. (Though I’d be opposed to corporate names on principle.)
…Now, I know football fans would be able to tear this idea apart. It’s not meant to survive them. It’s more of a “what-if.” But I’m more interested on the cultural impact of each state having one team to support (and states without a team now having a team of their own, and no sharing like the Carolinas do, though the Panthers technically play in North Carolina, in Charlotte, clearly over the state line… but they are right on the state line).
North Dakota has fewer people than Staten Island, NY.
What I would like is if every team was actually owned by the people of the city/state it represents.
See The Green Bay Packers ownership
So, someone else brought up the state size/population idea, and I initially dismissed it (sorry! to them, I mean) but thinking about it… it’s not that terrible. I don’t think it’s that crucial that every state have a winning team, but I feel it’s important that they have a team they can be proud of. And I think there are winners everywhere.
I have never cared about football in my entire life, but I think you just made me a Packers fan.
True story.
Years ago I was on my way to do an outdoor job. Waiting for the bus I realized I didn’t have a hat, so I went to the nearest dollar store. There was a bin of hats for sale and I picked up a white one and wore it for years. There was a white ‘G’ on a green background, but I didn’t recognize it.
One day I’m on a different bus and see an older lady wearing a jacket with the same logo as my hat. Turns out I’d been a Packers fan for a long time without realizing it.
Some states are larger than others, though. You’d have a much larger pool of qualified athletes based out of California (40 million people) and Texas (31 million people) than you would out of Vermont (640,000 people) and Wyoming (580,000 people).
Those larger states would also have way more money to pay for good facilities, resources, and top tier salaries for their athletes. I’d imagine players from smaller states would have to live like a lot of Olympic athletes, where you have a normal day job to pay the bills for most of the year and only focus on training for part of the year.
So you’d end up with a sport that the same 2-4 teams would just dominate each season, and everyone else participates just…because I guess.
I’d imagine college football would also be unrecognizable, as it would no longer be the pipeline to the professional league like it is today. There would also probably be a lot of debate over why we impose these rules for football specifically when we don’t for other sports (baseball, basketball, real football, hockey), to the extent that I think other sports would just become more popular.
Edit: As for team names, most of the ones you highlight do make sense. Sea hawks are birds endemic to Washington State. New England was the starting point of the American Revolution, where the OG American patriots are from. Instead of looking at the names like they must be the most iconic thing about a region (as if to say only Texas can have Cowboys), look at it more like “These are the Cowboys of Texas” (as opposed to the Cowboys of wherever else).
Also worth mentioning that Gatorade was named after the sports team, so justifying the name of the team based on the existence of the drink is a bit funny in context.
I didn’t know some of that, so thanks — but dynasties still do exist in sports. Like the NY Yankees in baseball, I feel like they’re almost guaranteed wins because they have the biggest budget. (I don’t even like baseball but I would like to visit their stadium one day, apparently it has a whole museum dedicated to the sport in it, and I think that’s awesome.)
I’ve had the same take and been told it’s unrealistic. I know it is, but I still want it.
One of the reasons I don’t really care to watch NFL/NBA/MLB/etc is cuz the teams change massively every year and include people from…well, everywhere. All over the world even.
Just not interesting to me. It would be so much cooler as a fan to root for a team from your region, comprised of players from your region. I just can’t get into it when I start rooting for a team that’s totally different the next season.
The rest of the world does recognize that in the US we call the sport football. In the same way that the rest of the world recognizes that there is a sport played in Australians that citizens of that great country also calls football.
Your notion of one team per state isn’t unique, that is an idea a lot of people have had mostly because they somehow think the sport and teams are a public entity, each is a private business.
Why there isn’t a football team in every US state, is each state can’t financially support a team. Alaska, Montana, Utah can’t put enough people in a stadium to support an NFL Team. Sure the NFL does profit sharing, but a great deal of the revenue of any the team is done through selling local add space, local marketing stadium sponsorship etc.
There is a reason that the vast majority of NFL teams are located in or around major cities.
Another fly in the ointment is that currently there are seven US states that more than one team, how would that get sorted out?
Now your notion of players coming from a particular state. Check out the State of Origin Game that is played in Australia. It is a Rugby Match that has rules similar to what you are talking about.
What TF is a SeaHawk
It is a type of Hawk that nests around water ways. In my area around the Chesapeake Bay we call them Osprey.
Other places call them River Hawks.
Yeah, this is unpopular.
Same thing for European soccer?
Only people born within 1h cycle distance from the football ground are eligible for the team.
Similar to The Up’Ards being those town members born north of Henmore Brook, which runs through Ashbourne, and Down’Ards are those born south of the river.
American football is a bastardized reenactment of WWI. The poor cannon fodder in the trenches (linebackers and whatnot) get chewed up like so much meat while the artillery (quarterbacks) lob shells (the ball) to try to gain a few yards on the field. The field marshals (coaches) try to direct the troops and take all the glory of a supposed victory, while the chateau generals (team owners) rake in the money and suppress the research about systemic traumatic brain injuries resulting from the activities. The general public doesn’t know any better and just wants to do their patriotic duty and support their boys.
Of course any real poking at this comparison falls apart next to real historical information but it’s a fun little thought experiment to piss off the football fans.
American football predates World War I. Several rule changes including allowing the forward pass were initiated because President Theodore Roosevelt threatened to regulate American football nationally due to deaths of several players.
Hence my final sentence saying the comparison doesn’t hold up under any real scrutiny.
I do agree that this nearly complete disconnect between the people in the teams and the people who actually live in the area is an issue, but making it so that people can’t move if they want to play a sport is a bit much. Maybe use rules for national teams and just make people commit to whatever state they want to live in?
An outsized number of players are from a few states. This has a lot to do with:
- overall state population
- popularity of the sport over other sports in that area
### States With Most NFL Players | | | | | | -------------- | ----------- | -------------- | ----------- | | State | NFL Players | State | NFL Players | | Texas | 199 | Maryland | 44 | | Florida | 179 | Pennsylvania | 44 | | California | 143 | Virginia | 41 | | Georgia | 143 | Tennessee | 33 | | North Carolina | 70 | Mississippi | 32 | | Louisiana | 59 | South Carolina | 32 | | Ohio | 57 | Arizona | 30 | | Illinois | 55 | Missouri | 30 | | Michigan | 55 | Indiana | 26 | | Alabama | 52 | Wisconsin | 26 | | New Jersey | 50 | Utah | 24 |Sure the other states can have players that aren’t already in the NFL, but it would be very unbalanced.
I mean technically you can do this with all sports. It would be neat because every year would be like a mini olympics.
I’d love that, absolutely. The issue, however, is that it would end up needing an entirely different script in the process.
The teams we have right now, and where they’re located, have esoteric significance that most don’t understand. I don’t even understand it fully either.
