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The Evolution of the Gridiron: A Complete History of NFL Expansion
The National Football League’s expansion history tells the story of American professional sports’ transformation from regional curiosity to cultural juggernaut, with each wave of franchise additions reflecting broader economic trends, demographic shifts, and the league’s evolving understanding of how to maximize revenue while maintaining competitive balance across increasingly unwieldy organizational structures. From the chaotic early years when teams appeared and disappeared with bewildering frequency—casualties of the Great Depression, World War II travel restrictions, and the simple economic reality that professional football hadn’t yet captured sufficient public imagination to sustain large numbers of franchises—through the calculated expansion strategies of the modern era where franchise valuations exceeding $6 billion make new team creation extraordinary windfalls for existing owners willing to share their monopoly, the NFL’s growth trajectory illuminates how American sports became big business while professional football specifically became the dominant force in the contemporary sports landscape.
The expansion story encompasses more than merely counting franchises or reciting dates when cities received teams—it reveals the NFL’s gradual recognition that controlled scarcity creates value, that geographic distribution must balance traditional football markets against growing metropolitan areas regardless of regional football culture, and that expansion provides existing owners with massive one-time payments (expansion fees now exceeding $1 billion per franchise) while diluting the talent pool and creating perpetual competitive disadvantages for expansion franchises that must build rosters from castoff players that established teams willingly surrendered. This tension between expansion’s financial benefits to existing owners and its competitive costs to the league’s overall product quality has defined NFL expansion philosophy for decades, creating the long periods of franchise stability that punctuate relatively rare expansion waves when economic and political circumstances align to make dilution’s downsides acceptable relative to the financial windfalls that new franchise fees provide.
The Formative Years (1920–1959)
The Transition from the APFA to the NFL
The American Professional Football Association’s founding in 1920 represented an attempt to bring organizational structure and legitimacy to professional football, which existed in chaotic form with teams forming and dissolving based on individual owners’ financial capacity and willingness to continue absorbing losses that professional football routinely generated in its early decades. The APFA’s transition to the National Football League name in 1922 reflected aspirations toward national scope and permanence that the reality of early professional football didn’t yet support—the “national” designation proved aspirational rather than descriptive, as franchises concentrated heavily in the industrial Midwest and Northeast while entire regions of the country lacked professional football entirely.
The early NFL’s instability manifested through franchises that appeared for single seasons or even partial seasons before folding when owners exhausted their financial resources or lost interest in subsidizing unprofitable football operations. This franchise mortality created the historical quirk where the NFL’s official founding in 1920 featured numerous teams that contemporary football fans have never heard of, with only the Chicago Bears (originally the Decatur Staleys before relocating to Chicago in 1921) and Arizona Cardinals (originally the Chicago Cardinals) surviving from that foundational season through the present day. This 90%+ mortality rate among founding franchises illustrates how professional football’s early years represented speculative ventures where most participants failed to achieve financial sustainability.
The Legacy of Founding Members: Why Only the Bears and Cardinals Remain
The Bears and Cardinals’ survival when every other founding franchise eventually folded reflects both fortunate circumstances and organizational stability that competitors lacked. The Bears benefited enormously from George Halas’s leadership, business acumen, and genuine passion for professional football that sustained the franchise through decades when football generated minimal profits and when many owners quit rather than continuing to subsidize their football hobbies. Halas’s involvement in the NFL’s governance and his strategic thinking about how to grow professional football’s popularity created institutional knowledge and relationships that helped the Bears survive the sport’s turbulent early decades.
The Cardinals’ survival seems almost accidental compared to the Bears’ strategic success, as the franchise moved from Chicago to St. Louis to Phoenix while rarely achieving sustained competitive or financial success that might explain their longevity. The Cardinals instead represent organizational persistence and the reluctance of NFL owners to allow franchises to fold entirely once the league achieved sufficient stability that franchise failure became rare rather than routine. The Cardinals’ multiple relocations demonstrate that survival sometimes meant abandoning markets when local support proved insufficient, accepting that franchise existence mattered more than maintaining specific geographic identities.
A Look at Defunct Franchises Like the Akron Pros and Dayton Triangles
The Akron Pros and Dayton Triangles exemplify the early NFL franchises that briefly existed before economic realities forced their closure. The Akron Pros achieved historical significance by winning the 1920 APFA championship—the first professional football championship in the league’s history—before struggling financially and eventually folding after the 1926 season when attendance and revenue proved insufficient to sustain operations. The Pros’ story illustrates how even championship success didn’t guarantee financial viability when professional football commanded minimal public interest compared to college football, which dominated the American sports landscape during the 1920s.
The Dayton Triangles operated from 1920-1929 before financial pressures forced the franchise to cease operations, with the team never achieving competitive success that might have generated the public support necessary for long-term sustainability. The Triangles’ name derived from the triangular-shaped park where they played home games, reflecting the modest facilities and amateur organizational structures that characterized early professional football. The franchise’s demise represented the broader winnowing process where only the most financially stable and competitively successful franchises survived while teams that failed to capture public imagination or that lacked owners willing to sustain losses indefinitely simply disappeared.
The AFL Merger and the Birth of Conferences (1960–1979)
The “AFL vs. NFL” Era and the Establishment of the AFC
The American Football League’s founding in 1960 created genuine competitive threat to the NFL’s professional football monopoly, with AFL teams offering higher salaries to attract talent and targeting markets that the NFL had ignored, including several major metropolitan areas without NFL franchises despite their size and economic importance. The AFL’s initial strategy involved both competing directly against the NFL in some markets while also establishing franchises in cities the NFL had neglected, creating a two-pronged approach that forced the NFL to either compete aggressively for talent and markets or risk losing professional football supremacy to this upstart rival.
The competition escalated throughout the 1960s as AFL teams began successfully signing top college prospects who previously would have defaulted to the NFL, with the salary bidding wars benefiting players enormously while creating financial pressures on both leagues’ owners who recognized that continued competition would prove costly regardless of which league ultimately prevailed. This economic reality created the conditions for merger negotiations, as owners from both leagues recognized that a unified professional football structure would reduce player salary costs, eliminate wasteful competition for media rights and sponsorships, and create a larger, more valuable organization than either league could build independently.
The 1970 merger established the American Football Conference from the ten AFL teams plus three NFL teams (Baltimore Colts, Cleveland Browns, Pittsburgh Steelers) who agreed to join the new conference to create balanced 13-team conferences. This realignment created the conference structure that persists today, with the AFC and NFC maintaining separate identities, playoff structures, and championship games before the Super Bowl determines the overall champion. The AFC’s establishment from the AFL teams preserved the upstart league’s identity and legacy while integrating it into the unified NFL structure, creating compromise that satisfied both leagues’ owners and fans.
The 1970 Merger Logic: Balancing Teams via Financial Indemnities
The merger’s complex negotiations required addressing competitive imbalances between the established NFL teams and newer AFL franchises, with financial indemnities paid to teams that accepted potentially disadvantageous realignment to create balanced conferences. The three NFL teams that joined the AFC—Baltimore, Cleveland, and Pittsburgh—received financial compensation for leaving the established NFL conference and joining what many perceived as the inferior AFL-based conference, though history would prove the AFC competitive with the NFC rather than systematically weaker.
The indemnity payments recognized the potential competitive and financial disadvantages that realignment might create, compensating teams for lost rivalries, potential scheduling difficulties, and the risks associated with joining a conference that lacked the NFL’s established prestige and history. These payments represented pragmatic recognition that creating balanced conferences required some teams to accept changes they wouldn’t voluntarily embrace without financial incentives, making the indemnities essential lubricant that facilitated the merger’s completion despite individual teams’ reservations about specific realignment decisions.
Temporary Conference Shifts: The 1976 Arrival of Seattle and Tampa Bay
The 1976 expansion that added the Seattle Seahawks and Tampa Bay Buccaneers created temporary conference imbalance, as adding two teams to the 26-team league required placing them in different conferences to maintain the 13-team balance that existed before expansion. The solution involved placing Seattle in the NFC and Tampa Bay in the AFC for the 1976 season before switching them to their permanent conferences—Seattle to the AFC and Tampa Bay to the NFC—in 1977, creating the bizarre historical footnote where both expansion teams switched conferences after just one season.
This conference shuffling reflected the complexities of maintaining balanced conferences when expansion occurs in odd numbers or when geographic and competitive considerations conflict with simple numerical balance. The switches also demonstrated that conference assignments carried less sacred significance than later eras would suggest, with the NFL willing to move teams between conferences when practical considerations demanded flexibility rather than treating conference membership as immutable identity that couldn’t be altered regardless of circumstances.
Expanding the Footprint (1980–1999)
The Impact of Relocations: The Colts Move to Indianapolis and the Oilers’ Nashville Journey
The Baltimore Colts’ shocking midnight move to Indianapolis in 1984 represented one of sports’ most controversial franchise relocations, with owner Robert Irsay moving the team under cover of darkness to avoid potential legal challenges that Baltimore officials had threatened. The move demonstrated that NFL franchise ownership included the right to relocate teams regardless of local fan support or political opposition, establishing precedent that empowered owners in future relocation negotiations with cities desperate to retain franchises. The Baltimore community’s devastation at losing the Colts—a franchise with rich history including multiple championships and legendary players like Johnny Unitas—created lasting bitterness that would eventually be partially addressed through the Cleveland Browns’ relocation to Baltimore in 1996.
The Houston Oilers’ journey to Nashville beginning in 1997 represented another contentious relocation where owner Bud Adams abandoned Houston for Tennessee after failing to secure the stadium improvements he demanded. The move occurred in stages, with the team playing temporary seasons in Memphis before settling permanently in Nashville, creating the transition period where the franchise’s identity evolved from the Houston Oilers to the Tennessee Titans. The relocation demonstrated again that franchise owners could abandon even major markets with strong football histories when financial considerations—primarily publicly-funded stadium construction—weren’t satisfied to their expectations.
These relocations established the modern NFL’s franchise mobility dynamics where ownership holds credible relocation threats that can be leveraged against municipalities to extract stadium financing and other concessions, with the implicit understanding that failure to satisfy ownership demands might result in the franchise relocating to markets willing to provide more favorable terms. This power dynamic has produced billions in public stadium subsidies as cities compete to attract or retain franchises, with the economic costs of these subsidies often exceeding any realistic economic benefits that franchise presence generates.
The 1995 Expansion: Bringing Football to the Carolinas and North Florida
The 1995 expansion that awarded franchises to the Carolina Panthers and Jacksonville Jaguars represented the NFL’s recognition that the Southeast’s growing population and economic importance warranted additional franchises beyond the existing teams serving the region. The expansion targeted large metropolitan areas—Charlotte and Jacksonville—that lacked professional football despite sufficient population and corporate base to potentially support NFL franchises, with the league prioritizing markets that could demonstrate stadium financing plans and ownership groups with the financial resources to sustain competitive franchises.
The $140 million expansion fee that each franchise paid represented massive windfall for existing owners, with the league dividing these fees among the established franchises to create immediate financial benefit from expansion that helped overcome the competitive dilution concerns that expansion inevitably creates. The expansion also demonstrated the NFL’s evolving geographic strategy that prioritized large, growing markets regardless of traditional football culture, recognizing that the NFL’s popularity had reached levels where franchises could succeed even in regions without deep football histories if the basic demographics and economics supported professional sports.
Both expansion franchises achieved relatively quick competitive success—the Panthers reached the NFC Championship Game in just their second season, while the Jaguars made the AFC Championship Game in their second year as well—demonstrating that expansion teams could build competitive rosters more quickly than earlier expansion franchises that had languished in futility for years. This quick success reflected both improved expansion draft rules that gave new franchises better access to talent and the general parity that NFL rules create through salary caps and revenue sharing that prevent systematic advantages for established franchises.
Reinstating the Browns: The Formation of the Baltimore Ravens
The Cleveland Browns’ relocation to Baltimore in 1996 created one of NFL history’s most unusual franchise situations, as the deal that allowed owner Art Modell to move the team to Baltimore included provisions that preserved the Browns’ name, colors, and history in Cleveland while guaranteeing that Cleveland would receive an expansion franchise within three years. This arrangement created the legal fiction that the Browns franchise merely suspended operations from 1996-1998 while Modell’s Baltimore franchise represented an entirely new organization—the Baltimore Ravens—despite being composed of the players and personnel who had been Cleveland Browns immediately before the move.
The arrangement satisfied multiple constituencies—Baltimore received the franchise they desperately wanted after losing the Colts, Cleveland retained the Browns’ identity and received commitment for a replacement franchise, and Modell achieved his stadium and market objectives by moving to Baltimore. However, the situation created ongoing debate about whether the Ravens should claim the pre-1996 Browns history or whether that history belongs exclusively to the re-established Cleveland Browns franchise that began play in 1999. The NFL’s official position treats the Browns history as belonging to Cleveland while the Ravens’ history begins in 1996, but the reality that the 1996 Ravens were literally the 1995 Browns in different uniforms complicates this tidy historical division.
The 32-Team Modern Landscape (2002–Present)
Houston’s Return: Awarding the 32nd Franchise to the Texans
Houston’s selection to receive the NFL’s 32nd franchise in 2002 represented partial recompense for the city losing the Oilers to Tennessee, though the Texans represented an entirely new franchise rather than the Oilers returning with different ownership. The expansion fee of $700 million represented enormous increase from the $140 million that Carolina and Jacksonville had paid just seven years earlier, demonstrating rapid franchise value appreciation that made expansion increasingly lucrative for existing owners. The Texans’ addition created the current 32-team structure that has remained stable for over two decades—the longest period without expansion or contraction in NFL history.
The Houston market’s attractiveness reflected its large population, corporate base capable of supporting luxury suite sales and sponsorships, and demonstrated football passion through the Oilers’ historical attendance figures despite that franchise’s eventual relocation. The city’s willingness to publicly finance a new stadium—Reliant Stadium, now NRG Stadium—proved essential to securing the franchise, as the NFL had learned through the 1990s relocations that stadium financing represented the crucial factor determining which markets could successfully support franchises regardless of their size or historical football interest.
Strategic Realignment: Creating Two 16-Team Conferences with Four Divisions Each
The 2002 realignment that accompanied Houston’s addition created the current structure of two 16-team conferences each divided into four four-team divisions, replacing the previous structure of uneven division sizes that created scheduling complexities and competitive imbalances. The realignment required moving the Seattle Seahawks from the AFC to the NFC to balance the conferences numerically, demonstrating again that conference membership remained negotiable rather than sacred when structural considerations demanded flexibility.
The four-division structure created the scheduling formula that persists today—each team plays division rivals twice (six games), one complete four-team division from the other conference (four games), one complete four-team division from within their conference (four games), and two additional conference games against teams that finished in equivalent positions in their divisions, creating the 17-game schedule (after the 2021 addition of a 17th game). This formula ensures every team faces every other team at least once every three years while maintaining the divisional rivalries that create scheduling consistency and regional interest.
The Stability of the Modern Divisional Setup
The 32-team structure’s remarkable stability over two decades reflects the NFL’s satisfaction with the current competitive balance, revenue distribution, and scheduling structures that the format enables. Expansion beyond 32 teams would require either creating conferences with uneven sizes or expanding to 36 or 40 teams to maintain the balanced divisional structure, with either option creating complications that the league apparently judges as outweighing expansion’s financial benefits. The stability also reflects that most major American markets already have franchises, limiting the obvious expansion candidates to smaller markets or international locations that create unique challenges around travel, time zones, and whether sufficient local support exists to sustain franchises.
The absence of expansion has created the unusual situation where franchise values have appreciated to $6+ billion without any new franchise creation to capture that value through expansion fees. This suggests either that the NFL genuinely believes 32 teams represents optimal league size for competitive and operational purposes, or that the political challenges of determining which cities receive expansion franchises and which existing owners would face new local competition have proven too difficult to navigate even when the financial benefits would be enormous.
The Business of Expansion: Regulations and Finance
The 75% Rule: Why Expansion Requires a Super-Majority Vote
The NFL’s requirement that expansion receive approval from 75% of existing owners (24 of 32 teams) creates substantial obstacles to adding franchises, as this super-majority requirement gives any coalition of nine or more owners effective veto power over expansion regardless of the financial benefits or strategic rationale. This governance structure reflects the NFL’s recognition that expansion fundamentally affects all existing franchises through talent dilution, potential competitive rebalancing, and the creation of new rivals for corporate sponsorships, media attention, and player acquisition. The super-majority requirement ensures that expansion occurs only when the benefits are so overwhelmingly positive that even skeptical owners can be convinced to support it.
The 75% threshold has proven sufficiently high that expansion hasn’t occurred since Houston in 2002, suggesting that building consensus for franchise addition remains difficult even when individual markets might present compelling cases for receiving teams. The requirement also empowers owners who might face competitive threats from expansion—those whose territories might be impacted or who might lose competitive advantages through further talent dilution—to block expansion unless compensated sufficiently to overcome their objections.
Territorial Rights: Protecting Home Markets Within a 75-Mile Radius
NFL territorial rights grant existing franchises exclusive control over professional football within 75 miles of their home stadiums, preventing other teams from relocating into those protected zones without the incumbent franchise’s permission. This territorial protection creates valuable monopolies for franchises in major markets, ensuring they don’t face direct local competition that would fragment fan support and corporate sponsorships. The 75-mile rule has generated controversy in cases where major metropolitan areas potentially could support multiple franchises but where existing teams have used territorial rights to block potential competitors.
The territorial rights have proven particularly contentious in situations involving stadium negotiations, where franchises have threatened relocation to markets within other teams’ territories, requiring complex negotiations about compensation and permission that complicate the already difficult process of franchise relocation. The rights also affect expansion discussions, as potential expansion cities within 75 miles of existing franchises would require permission from those incumbent franchises, giving them effective veto power over expansion in their regions regardless of whether the larger ownership group supports adding franchises in those markets.
New Investment Frontiers: The 2024 Shift to Allow Up to 10% Private Equity Ownership
The NFL’s 2024 decision to allow private equity firms to purchase up to 10% ownership stakes in franchises represented significant shift from previous policies that restricted franchise ownership to individuals and families. This policy change reflected recognition that franchise valuations exceeding $6 billion made it increasingly difficult for individual owners or families to purchase teams outright, potentially limiting the pool of qualified buyers when franchises came available for sale. By allowing institutional investors to hold minority stakes, the NFL created liquidity for existing owners who might want to monetize portions of their holdings while maintaining control of their franchises.
The private equity allowance also represented admission that franchise ownership had evolved from sports enthusiast hobby into financial asset class where institutional investors demand access to the investment opportunities and returns that NFL franchise appreciation provides. The 10% limitation ensures that private equity doesn’t gain control of franchises while allowing these financial actors to participate in the value creation that NFL team ownership generates. This change could eventually facilitate expansion by creating additional capital sources that ownership groups could tap to fund the billion-dollar expansion fees that new franchises would require.
Stadiums and Geography
Shared Homes: The Unique Situations of MetLife and SoFi Stadiums
MetLife Stadium in New Jersey houses both the New York Giants and New York Jets, creating the unusual situation where division rivals share a home facility while maintaining separate practice facilities and operational independence. This arrangement reflects the extraordinary costs of modern stadium construction—MetLife cost approximately $1.6 billion when completed in 2010—that make stadium sharing economically attractive even for franchises that could theoretically afford independent facilities. The shared stadium creates scheduling complexities during the regular season when both teams have home games on the same weekend, though the NFL has generally accommodated these challenges through creative scheduling that minimizes conflicts.
SoFi Stadium in Los Angeles similarly houses both the Rams and Chargers, though the power dynamics differ substantially from the Giants-Jets arrangement as the Rams own the stadium while the Chargers are tenants paying rent to their divisional rival. The $5+ billion facility represents the most expensive stadium ever constructed, with costs that likely couldn’t be justified for a single franchise regardless of the Los Angeles market’s size and wealth. The shared arrangement allowed both franchises to access world-class facilities in the nation’s second-largest market while spreading the extraordinary construction costs across multiple revenue streams.
Playing Surfaces: The 15 Teams Remaining Committed to Natural Grass
Fifteen NFL teams maintain natural grass playing surfaces despite the operational simplicity and weather resilience that modern artificial turf provides, reflecting beliefs that grass offers superior player safety and performance characteristics that justify the additional maintenance costs and weather-related complications. The grass advocates point to research suggesting lower injury rates on natural surfaces, particularly for knee and ankle injuries that can be career-threatening, though the evidence remains somewhat inconclusive and disputed by artificial turf manufacturers who cite their own research showing equivalent or superior safety performance.
The natural grass commitment requires sophisticated field maintenance including specialized drainage systems, grow lights for indoor or retractable-roof stadiums, and contingency plans for weather events that can render grass fields temporarily unplayable. The costs and logistics make artificial turf attractive for many franchises, particularly those in northern climates where maintaining grass fields through winter weather proves exceptionally challenging. The continued grass-turf divide reflects different organizational philosophies about balancing player safety, performance quality, operational costs, and facility aesthetics.
Global Reach: The Rise of International Series and Neutral-Site Games
The NFL’s international series games—regularly played in London, Frankfurt, and Mexico City—represent the league’s long-term strategy to develop global audiences and potentially expand internationally through permanent franchises in European or other international markets. The games require substantial logistical planning around travel schedules, practice facilities, and the competitive disadvantages that international travel creates for teams designated as “home” teams who surrender actual home games to play in international venues. Despite these complications, the games have generated strong attendance and television audiences that validate the NFL’s belief that international markets offer growth opportunities that domestic market saturation makes increasingly difficult to achieve in the United States.
The neutral-site games extend beyond international venues to include domestic games played in non-NFL cities, creating opportunities for the league to explore potential expansion or relocation markets while generating revenue from markets that lack franchises. These games also serve political purposes by maintaining the NFL’s presence in markets that might compete for future expansion franchises or that could serve as relocation destinations if existing franchises seek new homes. The international and neutral-site games collectively represent the NFL’s recognition that geographic expansion beyond current markets offers growth opportunities that justify the operational complications and competitive impacts that these games create.
Conclusion: The Legacy of Growth
Woven History: How Expansion Shaped “America’s Favorite Pastime”
The NFL’s expansion history reveals how professional football evolved from regional curiosity to national obsession through calculated geographic growth that brought franchises to every major American market while creating the competitive structures—conferences, divisions, playoff formats—that organize the modern game. Each expansion wave reflected the NFL’s evolving understanding of which markets could support franchises, which ownership groups possessed the resources to sustain competitive operations, and which stadium arrangements would provide the facilities that modern professional football demands. The expansion story encompasses triumph—new markets embracing professional football and creating passionate fan bases—and tragedy—cities losing beloved franchises to relocation, expansion teams struggling through years of futility before achieving competitiveness.
The growth transformed professional football from entertainment option competing against college football, baseball, and other recreational activities into American culture’s dominant sport, with television ratings, betting engagement, and cultural prominence that exceed any competing entertainment property. This transformation didn’t occur naturally or inevitably but rather through strategic expansion decisions that grew the league’s footprint while maintaining the competitive balance and compelling narratives that make NFL football appointment viewing for millions of Americans across diverse demographics and regions.
Rivalries and the Fabric of the Modern Game
Expansion’s greatest legacy may be the geographic rivalries it created—Cowboys-Giants, 49ers-Seahawks, Steelers-Ravens—that provide the narrative continuity and emotional stakes that transform football from mere athletic competition into cultural phenomenon that communities embrace as part of their collective identities. These rivalries emerged from expansion and realignment decisions that placed franchises in proximity to each other while creating the repeated matchups that allow rivalries to develop through accumulated history and memorable games. The divisional structure ensures rivals face each other twice annually, creating the familiarity and stakes that make rivalry games appointment television even for casual fans who might not follow football comprehensively.
The expansion story ultimately reveals that the NFL’s success required not just talented players and exciting games but strategic growth that brought professional football to markets nationwide while creating organizational structures that maintain competitive balance and narrative intrigue across decades. The 32-team structure that has persisted for two decades represents, at least temporarily, the NFL’s assessment that the league has reached optimal size where further expansion’s costs would exceed its benefits. Whether that assessment persists another two decades or whether future expansion eventually occurs to capture franchise valuation growth and extend the NFL’s footprint internationally remains uncertain, but the history of expansion demonstrates that the league has successfully navigated growth challenges for over a century while evolving into American sports’ most successful and culturally significant enterprise.
A look at the history of expansion and relocation in the NFL
