AFC alignment oddities

[jcompton-Orlando]

Paul (or anybody else who was around then... Mario, Marco, Andrew?), how did the AFC alignment come about? I mean, I realize that the occasional alignment oddity is just a fact of life in sporting leagues, and of course we don't have any travel costs, but there seems to be a few weird ones.

I guess I haven't given it a whole heck of a lot of thought until this year since I was always in the EFC, but it seems a little strange...

- Raleigh is considerably more "east" than Birmingham, and the WLAF Skyhawks were in the East and the Fire in the West.

- Montreal is eastward, and fairly proximate to NY for a "natural divisional rivalry"--certainly closer then it is to, say, Sacramento! (Although Sacramento is kind of out there on an island regardless of who is in its division.)

- Columbus (Ohio) is almost as far west as Birmingham.

I remember we experimented with radically realigning the EFC and nobody was particularly happy with the results (except, I suppose, Berlin, which has done far better as the EFC East Thunder than they ever did as the EFC West Celts) so I don't know that I'm pressing for change. Just wondering what the rationale was.

Hypothetical, slightly-more-geographical alignment below. This puts all teams in their historical WLAF divisions.

AFC East:

ORL
MON
NY/NJ
RD
OHIO

AFC West

BIR
SA
SAC
MEX

[Paul-London]

Good point !  Surprised i put the teams in the wrong divisions !  Looking on wikipedia...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_League_of_American_Football#1991_season

Birmingham should be in the West and Montreal/Raleigh the East.

Think i gave up moving teams around as i was trying to do the right thing historically but when Austria moved to the East i know Mario (and others) missed the London/Austria rivalry. 

If Montreal moved then it would be a shame for David/Jason.H to not have their rivalry often.

I mean Paris should be Cologne or Hamburg but again when i changed Paris-Cologne i know Andrew.B was a bit anti it as you get to like your team/colours (even if its a made up team) which sounds crazy but you know what i mean !

But yeah i dont know why from day 1 i had the wrong teams in the AFC, weird.  Just a mistake which surprises me as back then i was into WLAF/NFLE big time so i'm surprised i started them off in the wrong division !

[jcompton-Orlando]

I mean Paris should be Cologne or Hamburg but again when i changed Paris-Cologne i know Andrew.B was a bit anti it as you get to like your team/colours (even if its a made up team) which sounds crazy but you know what i mean !

It just didn't feel right. Cologne was the newcomer to the NFLE, but the Musketeers had years and years of history in the FWL.

With the Ireland -> Berlin move, I think it was easier because it happened relatively early in the league's history, and the Celts had basically been wretched, so it seemed plausible that the locals would have given up on the team and sent it away.