Former NFL stadiums and what those properties look like now

St.Dan said
The realignment of the divisions in 2002 was the last league-wide decision that made sense. That was still in Tags’ time as commish and the league hadn’t become a serious question mark in terms of integrity yet.

It made zero sense to call our old division the NFC “West” when two of its four teams weren’t anywhere near the West. Granted, the previous divisional setup was a result of the political-style dealmaking that had to happen in the late ‘60s to make the AFL-NFL merger work in the first place.

I actually preferred the quirkiness of the old alignment. I thought it was pretty awesome to have rivalries with teams from different parts of the country. Plus a team like Dallas have those sort of traditional, non-regional rivalries, so it's not like they totally went away. The Patriots' dynasty sure would have looked a lot different if they were going toe-to-toe with Peyton Manning for division title honors every year instead of the trash QBs they faced every year in the new "East."

Another underrated thing I didn't like about realignment is I thought it kind of inadvertently diluted the playoff field. Prior to realignment, and I did this research awhile back and my memory is fuzzy, but I think there was literally only one single digit win division winner since the league went to 16 games, and now, it is pretty much an annual occurrence. I also liked how under the old alignment, the best wild card team hosted a playoff game. But now, with this mess we have, the best wild card team is on the road and many times they're playing against a far inferior division winner record-wise.

But oh well, we have what we have.