America’s major professional team sports leagues have had a long period of stability since the early part of this century, with three leagues sitting at 30 teams while the NFL went forward with 32, but that may be changing. The NHL has already increased the size of its league to 32, and by most accounts the NBA and MLB may follow suit by the end of this decade.
When it comes to organizing leagues into conferences and divisions, 32, as a power of 2, is close to an ideal number; not for nothing did baseball have two eight-team leagues for decades prior to the advent of expansion in 1961. It gives the flexibility to create either four divisions of eight teams each, as in the NHL, or eight of four, as in the NFL – with the latter being more interesting and allowing more schedule flexibility and a greater emphasis on rivalries.
On Sunday Nate Silver gave his ideal divisional alignment for a 32-team MLB, opting to go with eight divisions of four teams. This is a topic I’ve been thinking about for a while myself, and I need to get a post out by the end of the month while buying myself some time to work on more substantial posts I mostly spent this month putting off, so I decided to piggyback off of his proposal to present my own visions for how to divide 32-team leagues not only in MLB, but in the NBA and even NHL as well.