The various interests involved couldn't agree on which of the five plans to accept and the official word is after many long discussions that commissioner Pete Rozelle pulled the eventual slip out of five choices.
I'd be surprised if Rozelle didn't prefer the grouping that was selected and "might" have bent a corner or another identifying characteristic to find the one that he wanted, much as the urban legend of the "bent corner" that David Stern allegedly found on the envelope of the New York Knicks in the first lottery drawing to deliver Patrick Ewing to the Knicks.
The divisions would remain in this lineup until the 2002 season where there were some minor tweaks that were needed after various expansions.
The interesting part of these are the rivalries that could have been and the rivalries that occurred via the only possibility of the five.
The Dallas-Washington rivalry that developed starting with the Tom Landry Cowboys against the George Allen Redskins was only listed on the eventual winner.
The Green Bay-Minnesota rivalry between neighboring states was also only an option on the winning option and had an eighty percent chance of not occurring as well.
The Atlanta-New Orleans rivalry would have been lost on two of the five chances.
The Redskins, Eagles, and Giants were one group guaranteed to stay together, as were the Bears and Packers along with the Rams and 49ers, so there must have been some type of agreement for some franchises to stick together.
The Vikings had an eighty percent chance of being with the Redskins, Eagles and Giants and the Packers were listed on none of those slips.
The rivalries that we could have taken for granted and instead never happened are even more fun to think about.
Yes, we could have lost Cowboys-Redskins, but on two choices, the Cowboys would have been in the same division as the 49ers and Rams.
Imagine Tom Landry's Cowboys playing twice a year vs Chuck Knox's Rams in the '70s and then the early '80s against the 49ers of Bill Walsh and Jimmy Johnson's Dallas teams of the early '90s against the Steve Young/Jerry Rice Niners.
Another side of losing Cowboys-Redskins that could have been a positive would have been the Minnesota Vikings with new rivalries.
I bet the Bud Grant Vikings against George Allen's Redskins would have been a really good one and would have progressed into the 80s when the Vikings had good teams under Grant and Jerry Burns against the Joe Gibbs era Redskins.
The Vikings of the 80s and 90s would likely have developed something with the New York Giants with both teams being at the top of the league.
The Falcons and Saints would have been far different in the two scenarios without each other.
The Falcons would have been in the Eastern with the three-team block and the Vikings with the Saints with the Central block with Chicago, Green Bay and Detroit as a real fish out of water.
In the other, it would have been the Falcons in the Central with the Saints aligned with the Rams and 49ers in the Western Division as they would be in the real-life NFL, but with Dallas, who they would have looked at as a rival, but would have spent years getting swatted aside by the Cowboys.
The biggest loser seems to be the St.Louis Cardinals, who in two possibilities would have had their best teams in the 70s with Don Coryell with weaker teams ( New Orleans and Atlanta still building off expansion) and (Chicago and Green Bay in a time that both teams were at their weakest) and even though they would have been in the same division with Dallas in both, it brings interesting thoughts.
Could the Cardinals have been the big rival to Dallas that Washington became?
If the Cardinals had become a perennial contender, could the Cardinals have remained in St.Louis and assuming that happened, Don Coryell never leaves and what happens to the Air Coryell Chargers without Don Coryell?
If the Cardinals stay in St.Louis, what team moves to Arizona or does the Valley of the Sun wait for expansion and which expansion team would have been muscled aside- Carolina or Jacksonville?
Football history decided with the luck of the draw.
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