What If Only The 30 Largest Cities in America Had Teams

40 comments

1. So my big takeaway here is Jacksonville is one of the 30 largest cities in the US

2. Why not 32?
   There’s 32 teams in the league.

3. You should do it based on Metropolitan Statistical Areas or something similar, city size can be a false sense of size. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metropolitan_statistical_area

   Edit: and I am not just saying that because Kansas City doesn’t make the list, although that helps.

4. Texas division looking STACKED.

   Wait… Why no Atlanta?

5. It would be interesting to do this statistical metro areas instead of cities as well, as a comparison.

   It’d also be interesting to do it proportional, so cities like NY, LA and Chicago would have multiple teams before smaller metro areas got their first one.

   Minneapolis/St Paul metro is the 16th largest metropolitan statistical area in the country, even though minneapolis and saint paul are both relatively small cities.

6. Your Louisville placement is a little too far east.

7. Do it.

   – guy from pdx

8. Louisville is on the Western side of the state.

9. Should’ve went with the Oklahoma City Super Sonics lol

10. Miami isn’t a top 30 city in the U.S? I would have guessed Miami, due to the weather etc would have been top 10.

    Surprised New Orleans isn’t in the top 30 either.

11. Let’s go my favorite team the Los Angeles rams 💪💪

12. The El Paso saints lmao

13. Metro area, not city size. Nitpicking as the Vikings went to Memphis, even though the metro area is 1/3rd of Minneapolis / St Paul

14. Happy the Bengals wouldn’t need to leave their state

15. Only thing I’d change is put the Chargers back in San Diego

16. God damn El Paso stole my freaking NFL Team

17. I like how the Chargers changed their name to the Rams

18. I don’t like any world where the Green Bay Packers don’t exist

19. As others have said, city population is really not a useful metric in this regard and metro would be much better.

20. Fort Worth Bills is so cursed

21. Apportion the teams to cities based on the cost of living. Put two teams in Honolulu.

    [US Cities by Cost of Living](https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/2024/01/03/what-is-cost-of-living/71838710007/)

22. As a Lions fan who grew up in Portland, I am not in favor of this.

23. Louisville is further down the Ohio river not up river

24. City population is dumb. Miami and Atlanta are top 10 markets.

25. Wouldn’t [largest metro areas](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metropolitan_statistical_area#Rankings) make most sense?

26. Portland Packers does sound pretty nice

27. As a chiefs fan in Austin I would be ok with this universe

28. Eat this Atlanta Metropolitan Area Falcons!

29. Louisville is that big?

30. So many people are shocked to hear about Jax being the largest US city landwise but I’m sitting over here like “El Paso is a large city?!?!”

31. TIL Miami has less than 500,000 people

32. Everything on the coasts has a team. The large swaths of the county in the middle of nowhere are trying to entice the XFL to come play for them

33. I’m confused, how does Miami not make it?

34. Largest cities are so misleading.

    Whenever discussing how “large” a city is, it’s always better to use the Metropolitan Statisticsal Area or even the Combined Statistical Area metric over than just the city. You have large cities like Minneapolis, St. Louis, Miami, and Atlanta being left out because they have so many large suburbs that really tie the whole city together.

35. How did you treat Kansas City and Minneapolis/St. Paul?

    If you count by Metro those are both top 30. If you count them as just the namesake city they are not.

36. Now someone make the correct version with metro areas

37. Interesting that even when separating Dallas and ft worth they’re each top 30 still

38. OP did not check his work before posting

39. You should use the population of the metropolitan statistical area (MSA) rather than the city itself. Atlanta is not on this list despite being the 8th largest MSA in the country.

40. So because Jacksonville city limits back up to every yard in the southeast they are technically the largest city in Florida, but with a population barely under a million, and a metro pop of 1.6 million. Meanwhile down I-95, Miami’s metropolitan area is 6 million people. This map is dumb.