Professional sports team relocations have been a feature of the American sports industry since the nineteenth century.  Team owners have been willing to move from one city to another, and, occasionally, from one league to another, in search of greater profits.   While some relocations have produced litigation and legislative efforts to regulate the movement process, in most situations the decision to move has been left to the team owner.

It now appears that the Sacramento Kings of the National Basketball Association are poised to move to Seattle, a city that lost its previous NBA team, the Supersonics, to Oklahoma City in 2008.  Since the story broke, a number of publications, including the Wall Street Journal, have reported that the Kings are the most travelled major league sports franchise in American history.  That is true, although at least one other current team can claim to have moved as frequently.

The current Kings began life in the 1920’s as a semi-professional team in Rochester, New York.  In 1945, the Rochester Royals joined the National Basketball League, then switched to the Basketball Association of America in 1948, and in 1949, it was one of the inaugural teams of the National Basketball Association which was formed with the BAA merged with the NBL.

In 1957, the Royals moved to Cincinnati, and in 1972, they moved to Kansas City and Omaha, splitting their home games between the two cities.  Because the American League baseball team in Kansas City was already known as the Royals, the team changed its name to the Kings.  After the 1974-75 season, the team began playing all its games in Kansas City, where it remained until it moved to Sacramento in 1985.  If they do move to Seattle, that will be the team’s sixth city.

However, a case can be made that the Indianapolis Colts of the National Football League have also played in at least six different cities.  Here’s the argument.

From 1913 to 1916, the top semi-professional team in Dayton, Ohio was called the Cadets.  In 1916, the team apparently became fully professional and changed its name to the Dayton Triangles.  The Triangles quickly established themselves as one of the strongest professional elevens in the Midwest, and when the National Football League was organized in 1920 (originally as the American Professional Football Association) the Triangles were a charter member.

The Triangles played in the NFL until 1929, when the team finished last in the 12-team league with an 0-6 record while being outscored 136-7.  (The 1929 championship was won by the Green Bay Packers who finished the season 12-0-1, which is still the second best record in NFL history).

At the conclusion of the season, the Dayton owners sold the team’s franchise to New Yorkers Bill Dwyer (a fomer NHL owner) and Jack Tepler (coach of the NFL’s Orange Toronados).  The new owners moved the team to Brooklyn  and renamed the team the Dodgers in imitation of the borough’s major league baseball team. (Trademark protection did not extend to team names in 1930.)

Given Dayton’s poor performance in 1929, the new owners made no effort to resign any of the Triangles, and instead recruited most of its players from the ranks of Tepler’s former players who had previously been under contract to the Orange Tornadoes.  Either the NFL was not using a reserve clause in its contracts in 1929, or else the Orange team (which moved to Newark in 1930) decided that it was not worth going to court to prevent its former players from jumping teams.

In 1937, a 50% interest in the Brooklyn team was purchased by future New York (baseball) Yankee owner Dan Topping.  Topping, who eventually gained complete control of the team, kept the Dodgers in Brooklyn, but in 1944, he changed the team’s name to the Brooklyn Tigers.  The team had gone 2-8-0 in its final season as the Dodgers, but the name change hardly helped as the club finished 0-10-0 in 1944.

As a result of the wartime manpower-shortage, the Brooklyn Tigers combined with the Boston Yanks for the 1945 season.  The largest number of the teams starters had played for Brooklyn in 1944, but the team was coached by Boston coach Herb Kopf, and the club played four of its five home games in Boston.  (The fifth home game, with the New York Giants, was played in Yankee Stadium.)

(Combined teams were a feature of the NFL during World War II.  In 1943, the Pittsburgh Steelers and Philadelphia Eagles combined for the season, and in 1944, Pittsburgh and the Chicago Cardinals did the same.)

However, after the 1945 season, Topping decided to move his team to the All America Football Conference, a new major league football enterprise designed to compete directly with the NFL.   In the new league, Topping’s team was renamed the New York Yankees, and it played its home games in Yankee Stadium.   Although most of the Yankees were recruited from the ranks of returning veterans and recent college graduates, Topping brought several of the best of his Tigers/Yanks players with him to the new team, including fullback Pug Manders, tackle Don Currivan, and fullback Eddie Prokof, the first round draft pick of the Tigers/Yanks in the 1945 NFL draft.

To fill the gap opened by the move of the Tigers to the AAFC and in anticipation of a post-World War II sports boom, the NFL allowed the Boston Yanks—the Tigers former partner–to move to New York City where the team played as the New York Bulldogs.

After four seasons of competition, the two leagues agreed to merge.  Cleveland, San Francisco, and Baltimore (the original Colts) were added to the ten team NFL, now (temporarily, as it turned out) dubbed the American-National Football League.   Although the mechanics of the transaction are a little obscure, as part of the merger of the leagues, the AAFC Yankees and the NFL Bulldogs were permitted to merge into a single “second” New York team.  Ownership of the combined team, called the New York Yanks, went to Bulldogs owner Ted Collins (who paid $1 million for the Yankees).

The combined team was coached by Red Strader, the former coach of the Yankees, and the vast majority of the team’s players had played for the Yankees the year before.  Although the New York Giants were permitted to take several players from the Yankees as deferred compensation for allowing the new Yanks to move into their territory, nine of the eleven starters for the 1949 Yankees played for the 1950 Yanks.  Essentially, Collins bought the Yankees and substituted them for his team in New York.  Moreover, the similarity of team name, coach, and players undoubtedly led New York football fans to associate the 1950 NFL team with its 1949 AAFC predecessor.

Although the 1950 Yanks compiled a 7-5-0 record, the following year the team slumped to 1-9-2.  At this point owner Collins decided to get out of the football business and sold his franchise to the league.    The NFL in turn transferred the franchise to a group from Texas, who moved the team from New York to Dallas, where the team was dubbed the Texans.  Along with the franchise came the roster of the 1951 New York Yanks.

The 1952 Dallas Texans tuned out to be one of the biggest disasters in NFL history.  Not only did the team lose its first seven games of the season, but white residents of Jim Crow Dallas seemed reluctant to cheer for a team with black players.  (Several  of the former Yanks were African-Americans including star running back Buddy Young.)  In their first four home games, the Texans never drew as many as 18,000 fans while playing in the 70,000 seat Cotton Bowl.  After Game 7, a 27-6 home loss to the Los Angeles Rams in which the team drew just over 10,000 fans, the franchise was returned to the league.

The NFL moved the team offices to Hershey, Pennsylvania (near the NFL offices in Philadelphia), and the Texans played one of their two remaining home games in Akron, Ohio, and the other in Detroit against the Lions.  With only a single victory over the Bears (in the Akron game), the Texans finished their only season at 1-11-0.

After the season, the abandoned  Dallas franchise was awarded to Carroll Rosenblum of Baltimore who renamed the team the Colts.  (The original Colts had folded after the 1950 season, becoming the last NFL team to go out of business.)  The Colts initially flourished in Baltimore, but faltering attendance led the team to relocate to Indianapolis in 1984, where the team has played ever since.

So Dayton became Brooklyn and Brooklyn became New York after a one year stay in Boson.  New York  became Dallas and then Baltimore and then, finally, Indianapolis.  Counting the temporary combination of 1945, the team has played home games in seven different cities.  (I do realize that since 1898, New York and Brooklyn have been part of the same city, but for sports purposes, they have traditionally been treated as though they were two separate municipalities.)

It would be interesting to see the Colts play a “turn-back-the-clock” game next year wearing Dayton Triangle uniforms, but I am not holding my breath.

With the National Hockey League lockout now well into its second 100 days, and with chances of there being a 2012-13 season looking more and more remote, some NHL owners are apparently thinking about expanding the number of teams in the league from 30 to 32. The most frequently mentioned locations for new teams are Seattle and Quebec.

Apparently, the idea is that the labor dispute will be settled eventually, and that current owners could make up for some of their losses by dividing up sizeable expansion fees from the two new teams.

In reality, the best thing for the NHL would be to contract back to 21 teams, the number it had between 1979 and 1991, which is increasingly looking like the league’s golden age.

In 1979, the then 17-team NHL agreed to add four teams from its former competitor, the World Hockey Association. For the next twelve seasons, the league played with three 5-team and one 6-team divisions. The growing popularity of NHL hockey in the early 1990’s led the league to somewhat ambitiously add nine teams between 1991 and 2000. In retrospect, this decision to expand the league into new markets in the southern half of the United States is a major source of the league’s current financial problems.

The league simply has too many teams and too many teams in markets that will not support major league hockey.

How would one decide which nine teams to jettison and which 21 to keep? The goal could be reached by simply eliminating the nine post-1991 expansion teams, but that would overlook the fact that a few of the expansion teams—the San Jose Sharks, the Ottawa Senators, and the Minnesota Wild—are among the league’s more financially successful teams.

Fortunately, the recent Forbes Magazine franchise value evaluations provide the data that makes such a determination fairly simple.

According to Forbes, there are currently 20 NHL franchises with valuations of more than US $200 million, ranging from the Toronto Maple Leafs (worth an estimated $1b) to the Winnipeg Jets (worth $200m). Similarly, there were 20 franchises that had revenues during the 2011-12 season in excess of $95 million, ranging from Toronto ($200m) to Buffalo ($95m).

A total of 21 teams appear on these two lists. Nineteen are on both, with only Colorado (21st in terms of revenue) and Buffalo (22nd in terms of estimated value) appearing on one list but not the other. The nine franchises that appear on neither of these lists are the logical ones to eliminate.

The nine “to be folded” franchises are, in descending order of value according to the Forbes estimates: Anaheim Ducks, Tampa Bay Lightning, Florida Panthers, Nashville Predators, Carolina Hurricane, New York Islanders, Columbus Blue Jackets, Phoenix Roadrunners, and St. Louis Blues.

Six of the nine are post-1991 expansions teams, and Phoenix is a transformed beyond recognition version of the original Winnipeg Jets, since restored to Winnipeg in the form of the transferred Atlanta Thrashers. The other two teams, the New York Islanders and the St. Louis Blues, have been around for a much longer time.

The Islanders were founded in 1970, and a decade later began one of the greatest runs in North American sports history. The team won four consecutive Stanley Cups from 1980 to 1983, and almost won a fifth title, before losing in the Cup finals to Wayne Gretzky’s Edmonton Oilers in the 1984. However, for the past 20 years, the Isles have been one of the Sad Sacks of the NHL, qualifying for only 6 of the last 21 Stanley Cup play-offs and only one of the past seven.

Attendance has also tumbled as it has become clear that New York is not a good enough hockey town to support three NHL teams. The Islanders ranked dead last in the NHL in revenue last year with a total that was less than 80% of that garnered by the 29th ranked team (Phoenix).

The St. Louis Blues date back to 1967, when they were part of a decision to increase the size of the league from six teams to twelve. Thanks to a decision to put all of the expansion teams in their own division, the Blues played in the Stanley Cup finals their first three seasons in the NHL (1968 to 1970), but have not been back to the finals since. In most years, they have made the post-season, but they have usually exited early on. In the past 25 years, they have won only two division titles, and have a post-season series record of 12-19.

Losing the St. Louis franchise would be disappointing for me personally. I was a Blues season ticket holder from 1991 to 1993, and I have followed the team ever since. However, it is hard to deny the facts: the Blues are the least valuable franchise in the NHL, and their value has been declining rapidly. To flourish, the NHL needs to get rid of franchises like the Blues, and St. Louis will do fine without the team.

What would be left if these nine teams were eliminated? Simply an NHL on a much sounder financial footing with a much higher caliber of play (as only 70% of current players would still be in the league, with their less talented teammates returned to the minor leagues or to Europe).

Imagine the following divisional line-ups.

Northern Division: Montreal Canadiens, Boston Bruins, Ottawa Senators, Toronto Maple Leafs, Buffalo Sabers.

Eastern Division: New York Rangers, Pittsburgh Penguins, Philadelphia Flyers, Washington Capitals, New Jersey Devils

Midwest Division: Detroit Red Wings, Chicago Black Hawks, Dallas Stars, Minnesota Wild, Winnipeg Jets, Colorado Avalanche

Western Division: Vancouver Canucks, Los Angeles Kings, Calgary Flames, Edmonton Oilers, San Jose Sharks

With one-third of the teams in Canada and only three “warm weather” cities (LA, San Jose, and Washington), the league’s “old-time hockey” feel would be restored.

Dramatic contractions have occurred before in American sports history. In 1890, there were three major league baseball leagues with 24 teams. Multiple teams in single cities were the norm. After a negotiated settlement, the total was reduced to two leagues and 16 cities in 1891. In 1892, it was further reduced to one league and 12 teams, and in1900, to eight teams.

Similarly, between 1926 and 1927, the number of teams in the National Football League was reduced from 22 to 12. In 1950, the NFL and the competing All America Football Conference combined, and in doing so reduced the total number of teams from 18 in 1948 to 13 in 1950, and 12, in 1951. The National Basketball Association began play with 17 teams in 1949, but reduced the number of teams to 11 the following year and to eight in 1953-54.

In each case, teams were eliminated to insure the economic profitability of the remaining clubs.

Obviously, it would not be an easy task to buy out the nine NHL franchises identified for contraction. According to the Forbes estimates the combined value of the nine franchises is $1.43 billion. On the other hand, it is telling that the combined value of the nine weakest franchises is significantly less than the value of the Maple Leafs and Rangers ($1.75 billion), the two most valuable franchises.