What if the NFL expanded to 100 teams? Barnwell picks

Bill Barnwell, ESPN Staff WriterJun 24, 2024, 06:30 AM ET

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Sometimes, the best ideas come from inside the ESPN offices. Last week in Bristol, Connecticut, I was talking to an editor about the long-departed Hartford Whalers and how they originally found their place in the NHL. “If you were starting the NHL today, you probably wouldn’t put a team in Hartford,” the editor said offhand.

That got me thinking about an idea I’ve kicked around for a long time. In England, a country roughly the size of Ohio, there are 92 professional clubs across the first five divisions of their soccer pyramid. (A couple of those teams are Welsh, to be fair.) This past season alone, seven of 20 teams in the top-flight Premier League were in London. Two play in Liverpool, with massive stadiums a 20-minute walk away from each other. By the bottom of the professional pyramid, stadium capacities drop down to a couple of thousand, but you get the idea: There are a lot of teams in a very small area.

In America, things have evolved differently. While minor league baseball has spread out across the country, those teams aren’t independent. There’s no promotion and relegation. Teams leave their local fans and move to another city or even another coast without repercussions. Franchises have been granted the rights to their cities and push back if anyone moves into their territory. Leagues expanded and contracted during much of the 20th century, but as they have become multibillion-dollar industries, the four major American men’s sports have turned into closed shops, with the NFL as the most prominent example. The league hasn’t admitted a new member since the Houston Texans in 2002, leaving dozens of football-loving cities out of professional football.

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We can’t fix all of that, but we can imagine something better. Let’s say a lawsuit opened up the league for business and prevented the NFL from limiting itself to 32 teams. If England can support 92 professional soccer teams, America can do better. In a universe in which the league didn’t retain the right to keep new members out, how many professional teams could the U.S. support? Could it be 100? And if so, where would those teams go?

I’m going to explore that universe and find homes for 100 professional football teams across America. I’m not going to focus on promotion and relegation, how the schedule would work or how the play on the field might evolve, but I’ll instead focus strictly on where these teams would play. Let’s lay out some ground rules and the logic I used in trying to make this work:

No NFL teams are disappearing as part of this exercise. The 32 existing franchises are sticking around. As part of the new 100-team league, though, several will need to make decisions about where they play versus where they represent. Teams that have stadiums outside the area they purport to represent will either need to move to where they’re supposed to be or change their name and let someone else move in to take their place.

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No team holds any territorial rights. If someone wants to finance a professional team in Fort Worth, Texas, and compete for the hearts of Dallas-area fans, Cowboys owner Jerry Jones can’t do anything about it.

New cities and franchises were selected on a variety of factors. New teams are going to want as many fans as possible, so my first priority was finding places that had large population centers. I also considered whether each city had access to an existing football stadium and/or had a history of supporting football.

Fans aren’t going to change their allegiances overnight. At the same time, while there might be some fans in Fort Worth who would become fans of a new franchise, most people who have spent their life rooting for the Cowboys aren’t suddenly about to change their mind. I tried to be realistic about how adding a team to each area might impact fandom, and how saturated a market is with fans for each team. I was more aggressive putting new franchises next to each other as opposed to putting a new franchise next to an already-successful team.

As an example, Milwaukee obviously has more than enough of a population to support its own NFL team, given that the city has more than 560,000 people who already root for the NBA’s Bucks. Would it make sense to put a team there as part of this top-100 group? With the Packers having already put down roots just over 100 miles away and establishing themselves as Milwaukee’s team, it would be incredibly difficult for a Milwaukee-based franchise to establish itself. In New York, on the other hand, there are simply so many people that the Giants and Jets might not be enough.

There’s some crossover happening between college and pro football. In real life, the lines between college and pro football have been blurred by the impact of NIL money. Perhaps the lines are blurred further in this 100-team league. I’m not suggesting Alabama, Notre Dame and Penn State are going to field NFL teams, but putting pro teams in their respective locales might make some sense, especially because they have existing stadiums.

I’ve included a number of college cities as potential landing spots for teams here, although I’ve left others out if there’s a notable NFL team nearby. Do they exist as a hybrid team with professional status and the history of the college football team? Are they a smaller franchise that relies upon the existing fan base of the school and probably focuses on signing alumni of that college in free agency? I’ll let you decide.

In the end, I found 68 new teams to join the existing 32 to make 100 professional football franchises. Regions can overlap and have murky definitions, so don’t get too attached to where each team lands, but I’ve separated the country into a handful of sections and will address our new additions spot-by-spot. Let’s begin in the football hotbed of America: Texas is way too big for just two teams, but how many more could we add?

Texas (9 total teams)

NFL teams that already exist: Dallas Cowboys, Houston Texans

We’ll throw Jerry Jones’ family a bone here. While they’re going to be prevented from suing to try to keep most of Texas for themselves, we won’t put another team in Fort Worth or Arlington to try to compete with the Cowboys. Likewise, the Texans will retain Houston, America’s fourth-most-populous city, entirely for itself. Instead, we’re placing six new teams around different parts of the state, many of which are several hours away from any of the others.

San Antonio: Already the most populous city in the country without an NFL team, San Antonio is 200 miles from Houston and 285 miles from Dallas, leaving a large area of potential fans to try to add. The city already rabidly supports its Spurs, and it already used the Alamodome to house teams in various spring football leagues, most recently the Brahmas of the UFL. Among cities that haven’t housed NFL teams in the past, San Antonio is easily the best expansion candidate.

Austin: The capital city has rapidly grown in recent years with an influx of tech workers from out of state, leaving the potential for a new team to win the hearts and minds of Austinites. The city recently landed its first professional men’s team, Austin FC in Major League Soccer, and already has a 100,000-plus seat stadium in place for the University of Texas.

Waco: Between Austin and Dallas on I-35, Waco might be just far enough from either city to justify another team in this football-obsessed state. There’s already a significant stadium on site for Baylor in McLane Stadium. I struggled to pick between Waco and College Station as a potential option here; Waco being a larger metro area helped it make the 100. College Station will be on our list for expansion when we make this the 150.

Former ownership of the Vikings once threatened to move the team from Minnesota, with San Antonio one of the options. Ronald Martinez/Getty Images

Corpus Christi: In trying to spread teams around the state, identifying Corpus Christi as a potential franchise for south Texas makes sense. San Antonio also qualifies as southern Texas, but Corpus Christi is more than two hours south of its neighbor and has a population of more than 300,000 people in its own right. It already supports a minor league team for the Astros.

Lubbock: Moving further west in this sprawling state, there’s a window for a team once we get several hundred miles outside of Dallas. Amarillo might have been a viable choice, but Lubbock is farther away from some of the other cities we’re adding to the 100; it has a population of more than 200,000, and there’s already an existing stadium for Texas Tech.

Odessa: It seems only fitting to give Lubbock a local rival in Odessa, about 140 miles to the south down US-87. Odessa might be more famously remembered as the town depicted in “Friday Night Lights,” and its stadium houses both the Odessa and Permian high school teams. While Odessa would be one of the smallest markets in our top 100 by population, I’m counting on the area’s passion for football shining through.

El Paso: Our final addition from Texas, the border city would be closer to some new rivals in other Southwest states than to its other rivals in the Lone Star state. As the league courts fans in Mexico by playing games in Mexico City and having teams visit Monterrey, a worldwide expansion would likely include at least one team in Mexico, if not more. With our goal to place 100 teams in the United States, though, El Paso is as close as this project comes to landing a team in Mexico itself.

Southwest (5)

NFL teams that already exist: Arizona Cardinals, Las Vegas Raiders

Phoenix was the only city with an NFL team in this rapidly growing part of the country before the Raiders moved to Vegas in 2020. I’d argue Vegas might be able to support a second team given how new the Raiders are to town, but there’s no shortage of potential candidates in the Southwest for professional football teams. You could add Oklahoma in here if you consider it part of the Southwest, and its teams would have natural rivalries with Texas, but I’m sticking them in the Mid-South area instead.

Reno, Nevada: More than 400 miles northwest of Vegas, Reno might have more of a rivalry with the Northern California teams in our 100 than its in-state competitors. The University of Nevada already has a stadium, and Reno has supported a Triple-A baseball team, so there’s sporting infrastructure in town. The lure of Vegas has helped its various teams add free agents, but what about Tahoe?

Albuquerque, New Mexico: A natural rival for the teams in West Texas, Albuquerque is one of the larger metros in the Western United States without a professional sports team, although the Triple-A Isotopes led the Pacific Coast League in average attendance last year. Playing more than 5,000 feet above sea level would give Albuquerque a built-in competitive advantage, something that has helped the Broncos during their time in the NFL.

Tucson, Arizona: A local derby with Phoenix? Tucson is closer than most of our other new additions around already-existing NFL teams, as you can make the 113-mile trip between the two cities in less than two hours if traffic’s right. With more than 500,000 people, though, it has a large enough base to support its own team. The indoor team is called the Sugar Skulls, which is a name that probably wouldn’t fly with the NFL and absolutely would stick around in our league.

Mid-South (7)

NFL teams that already exist: New Orleans Saints

On one hand, this is a tough area to address. It’s tough to imagine anybody in Louisiana not rooting for the Saints, and if you go much further west, you end up in Texans country. Get out of the Bayou and go further north, though, and there are a handful of cities that could produce rivals for the Saints, including a race for the rights to I-55:

Memphis, Tennessee: A popular pick for spring leagues over the past 25 years, Memphis is far enough away from Nashville and has an entirely different identity as a city. The Titans will certainly have picked up some fans in Tennessee after moving from Houston in 1997, but if you’ve seen the way Memphis supports the Grizzlies, you can imagine what that would look like in football form. An entire stadium of fans chanting “Whoop that trick?” A stadium in the shadows of the Bass Pro Shops pyramid? I’m excited. There’s another new Tennessee team on the way as well, although it’s in a different section.

Jackson, Mississippi: Between Memphis and New Orleans, there’s a window for Mississippi to get its first major professional sports team. There’s enough of a football interest statewide to support multiple SEC teams and Jackson State on Saturdays, so would a professional football team unite Ole Miss and Mississippi State fans for three hours on Sundays? Probably not, but there’s enough of a population base for a fun three-way rivalry with Memphis and New Orleans.

Shreveport, Louisiana: While I did say I can’t imagine anyone in Louisiana not rooting for the Saints, the exception among major cities there would be in the northwest, where Shreveport is closer to Dallas and more commonly associated with the Cowboys. In some places, a rivalry between two popular NFL teams might allow a new team to capitalize off of already-existing passions. This could be Texarkana’s team.

Midwest (17)

NFL teams that already exist: Chicago Bears, Cincinnati Bengals, Cleveland Browns, Detroit Lions, Green Bay Packers, Indianapolis Colts, Kansas City Chiefs, Minnesota Vikings

The Midwest is the cradle of the NFL and has been a hotbed for professional football ever since. While it draws from Milwaukee and other areas, the success of the Packers into the 21st century proves a city with a modest population can support a successful football team at the highest level. The deep roots these teams have instilled in their communities will make it difficult for new franchises to compete, but there are a few landing spots that might add fun new rivalries to already-historic battles.

Rockford, Illinois: Given the sheer numbers of people in the area, there’s room for a third football team in Illinois and Wisconsin outside of Chicago and Green Bay. I mentioned the issues with Milwaukee, and Madison is still going to be Packers country. Rockford might be suburban enough to attract some separate fanbase, plus whichever Bears fans have been worn down by nearly 40 years of heartbreak and bad quarterback play.

Fort Wayne, Indiana: Going east of Chicago and north of Indianapolis, Fort Wayne is far enough removed from either city to have a case for forming its own football identity. The city supported a professional football team in the past, although the Fort Wayne Friars faded out of existence after the 1920 season. There are five different current NFL cities that could potentially consider Fort Wayne part of their catchment area, which would make it a fun landing spot for its own team.

Columbus, Ohio: Add a sixth team surrounding Fort Wayne to that list in Columbus, which has been in love with college football for generations. A Columbus team would find it tough to compete with the already-existing affinity for the Buckeyes, but we’ve seen the Crew thrive in MLS after efforts to move the franchise were thwarted. Steelers and Browns fans might stick with their prior affinities, but there should be enough of a Columbus-specific fanbase to build matchups with those juggernauts if they end up competing together.

Louisville, Kentucky: Kentucky is another state seeing its professional football team count jumping from zero to two. Northern Kentucky is Bengals country, but Louisville is 100 miles southwest of Cincinnati and has its own built-in interest in football (and a stadium) with the Cardinals. Indoor teams haven’t fared well in Louisville, but maybe an outdoor team would resonate more consistently.

The St. Louis Battlehawks of the UFL had 40,317 fans in attendance for their first game of the 2024 season. Photo by Rick Ulreich/Icon Sportswire

Lexington, Kentucky: Louisville would also have a built-in rivalry with another college town in Kentucky that is about to land a professional team. With two teams about 80 miles away, there’s a chance the two potential fanbases could cannibalize one another and be too small to support either team. With nearly a million people between the two cities, though, Kentucky has enough people to support two professional football teams, even if some fans decide to stick with Joe Burrow & Co.

Wichita, Kansas: With Kansas in the news as it attempts to convince the Chiefs to leave Kansas City, a more realistic solution might be to leave the Chiefs in Missouri and get Kansas its own team. Putting a team just over the border as a local rival to the Chiefs might be fun, but going 200 miles southwest to Wichita would provide a larger population base in a relatively isolated area. The Chiefs might still be Wichita’s closest rivals, with our new team in Tulsa also coming into play.

Des Moines, Iowa: If Iowa can support multiple high-level college football teams, it should be able to support one professional football team. This could also be a spot for Cedar Rapids, but having this team in Des Moines creates a I-35 rivalry with two existing teams: the Chiefs and Vikings. If it wants to go with history, the Des Moines franchise could pull out the Warriors nickname, owed to a team that played in the little-remembered Professional Football League of America for three years in the 1960s.

Omaha, Nebraska: While Lincoln is the historic center of football in Nebraska because of the Cornhuskers, Omaha is a larger population and feels more likely to support a professional team. Omaha is more commonly associated with baseball by virtue of its Triple-A team and the Little League World Series, but it hosted a UFL team in the prior version of the league from 2009 to 2012.

St. Louis, Missouri: Duh. St. Louis never should have lost its team to begin with. At the very least, with the Rams leaving to return to Los Angeles in 2016, St. Louis should have been put in position to land an expansion team. With the UFL’s Battlehawks getting more than 40,000 people to attend their home opener in April, it’s clear St. Louis has both the appetite and fanbase for pro football. This would be a long overdue righting of a wrong.

West (8)

NFL teams that already exist: Denver Broncos

With sparsely populated states such as Montana and the Dakotas gaining population after the pandemic, there are a few natural landing spots for potential cities. Do they have the sheer number of people to sell 80,000 tickets to most home games? Probably not. In a country with 100 professional football teams, could they passionately support teams in smaller stadiums? Absolutely.

Salt Lake City, Utah: One obvious choice, given that SLC already has the Jazz and just added the former Arizona Coyotes to its roster. With more than a million people in its metro area, Salt Lake City would be the one city we’re adding in the West that wouldn’t have much trouble at all filling an NFL-sized stadium with fans.

Boise, Idaho: Would this team play on the blue turf? The capital city has come out in droves to support Boise State, and it would be able to draw on both its own population, the rest of Idaho and potentially Eastern Oregon. Its closest rivals might be in Salt Lake City, more than 300 miles away. There are going to be lots of flights between teams in the West.

Laramie, Wyoming: Nearly 700 miles to the east, Wyoming’s lone team in the 100 will be in Laramie for two reasons. One is the presence of a stadium, thanks to the University of Wyoming. I don’t believe there are any other major football stadiums across Wyoming, which doesn’t have the population to support many large facilities. The other benefit is that Laramie is 130 miles away from Denver, which sets up a natural rivalry with the Broncos. By the standards of teams in this part of the country, a two-hour drive might as well be walking distance.

An NFL team in Idaho could play on Boise State’s famous blue field. Photo by Douglas Stringer/Icon Sportswire

Bozeman, Montana: Another new state for professional football! While Billings is the biggest city in Montana by a considerable margin, Bozeman is rapidly growing and already has a 20,000-seat football stadium for Montana State. With the popularity of the “Yellowstone” TV show growing the city, Bozeman might only be a couple more spin-offs away from requiring a larger park for its new team.

Sioux Falls, South Dakota: South Dakota gets its team. One option would be to put it in Vermillion with the University of South Dakota, but we’re going 65 miles to the north for a larger population and an airport. Our new team will need to win the hearts and minds of South Dakotans who have otherwise adopted the Vikings, but Minneapolis is more than 230 miles away. We can make this work, especially given that there’s going to be some competition in North Dakota.

Bismarck, North Dakota: Bismarck is one of North Dakota’s two teams in the 100. Who suspected that? Bismarck doesn’t have a significant outdoor football presence, but it has had various indoor teams throughout the years, and the University of Mary is planning to build a new football stadium in town.

Fargo, North Dakota: If North Dakota State can send two quarterbacks into the top three picks of the NFL draft, why not cut out the middleman and just get a pro team in Fargo? The Fargodome holds 19,000, which would be a perfect size for a city of just over 130,000 people. About three hours between both Bismarck and Minneapolis, Fargo would probably have a tougher time shedding its purple and yellow jerseys. Bringing Carson Wentz and Trey Lance back to throw passes for the new team might help.

Pacific Northwest (3)

NFL team that already exists: Seattle Seahawks

While the Seahawks enjoy enormous popularity in the Seattle area, there’s enough of a population here to support multiple teams. Across the border, the BC Lions just announced an attendance of nearly 54,000 fans for their CFL home opener earlier this month. Leaving Vancouver aside, I can see room for two more teams to rival the Seahawks:

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Portland, Oregon: While there are certainly people in Portland who root for the Seahawks by default, that would change quickly if Oregon’s largest city landed a football team. Think about the rivalry between the Trail Blazers and Sonics in the NBA or, in more recent years, between the Sounders and Timbers in MLS. This would instantly become one of the most entertaining local fistfights in the league.

Spokane, Washington: Again, by default, the people of Spokane have little choice but to be Seahawks fans if they want to support a “local” NFL team. With the city nearly 300 miles east of Seattle, they could just as easily have their own team and draw fans from the nearby area. This team could also be in Pullman, where Washington State has a huge stadium, about 75 miles south of Spokane. If the state can support a legendary rivalry between two college football teams, why not a pro rivalry, too?

California (11)

NFL teams that already exist: Los Angeles Chargers, Los Angeles Rams, San Francisco 49ers

With Los Angeles already supporting two teams and the Bay Area hosting two of their own before the Raiders moved to Las Vegas, it’s clear the state’s biggest population centers have little trouble mustering up fans for multiple pro teams. If anything, while there are two imported teams playing in Inglewood, I wonder if a truly homegrown team might be able to surpass them both. We’re adding a handful of teams to both Northern and Southern California, including one that shouldn’t have lost a franchise to begin with:

San Diego: Give it the Chargers identity back and let the team that moved to Los Angeles find its own. San Diego State University’s Snapdragon Stadium now sits on the land that was once the Chargers’ home, and while it’s about half of the prior venue’s size, having a smaller, more intimate stadium isn’t the worst thing in the world. Ask the current Chargers about playing in front of a huge stadium filled with the other team’s fans on a weekly basis.

Anaheim: While Orange County might only be about 40 miles south of Inglewood and the two current Los Angeles teams, anyone who has driven in Southern California knows the pain of trying to get to and from Los Angeles if you’re outside the area. With a team in Anaheim attracting fans from Irvine and Santa Ana, football obsessives wouldn’t need to make the trek into Los Angeles. The Rams played at Angel Stadium for 15 years before their move to St. Louis; the nearly 60-year old stadium could be the home of another team if given the opportunity.

San Bernardino: Yes, the Inland Empire is getting its own team. There’s a Single-A stadium for the Inland Empire 66ers in San Bernardino, which gives it the tiniest of nods over the more densely populated Riverside for the home of our team. In the same metro area, the San Bernardino franchise could call on a base of nearly 600,000 fans between itself and Riverside alone. That population base hasn’t landed much more than minor league baseball in years past, but here’s an opportunity to sink its teeth into football.

Bakersfield: Likewise, Bakersfield is expanding beyond minor league baseball to land its first major professional sports team in our 100. Bakersfield College has a stadium that holds just under 20,000 people on its campus, which is probably the appropriate size for a city that hasn’t necessarily shown itself to be a football-loving town. As with other cities in California, though, it’s tough to see the population — more than 400,000 — and not dream that a local team would draw crowds.

San Diego lost its NFL team when the Chargers relocated to Los Angeles in 2017. AP Photo/Denis Poroy

Fresno: Going further north, Fresno would give Central California a long overdue team at the highest level. There’s college football and minor league baseball here, but outside of a couple forays in the Arena League, there hasn’t been a significant professional outdoor team. Fresno State’s stadium has expanded over the years to seat more than 40,000 people; if a Fresno team plays well, the city should be able to…

What if the NFL expanded to 100 teams? Barnwell picks

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Texas (9 total teams)

Southwest (5)

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Midwest (17)

West (8)

Pacific Northwest (3)

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