The future of the NFL?

The idea for this post came from a conversation from a friend last week about two recent hot-button issues in the NFL: the potential for teams in London or LA, and playoff expansion. When discussing playoff expansion, my friend said that once there are 14 playoff teams, it won't be long before there are 16 teams, and no first-round byes. Aside from the problem of how to schedule eight Wild Card games on one weekend (presumably a Friday night, a Monday night, and tripleheaders on Saturday and Sunday), my problem with 16 playoff teams was that I didn't want the NFL to have half the teams in the playoffs. I said I would only accept 16 playoff teams if the league had at least 36 teams. With that in mind, here is (facetiously) what a 36-team NFL might look like: 

AFC East: New England Patriots, London Monarchs, Buffalo Bills, Miami Dolphins, New York Jets, Jacksonville Jaguars

AFC Central: Pittsburgh Steelers, Baltimore Ravens, Cincinnati Bengals, Cleveland Browns, Indianapolis Colts, Tennessee Titans

AFC West: Houston Texans, Kansas City Chiefs, Denver Broncos, Oakland Raiders, San Diego Chargers, Los Angeles Avengers

Reasons for the AFC alignment: I placed London to be in the same division as New England and Los Angeles to be in the same division as San Diego. I kept the AFC East and West together because of their historic rivalries. I ended up keeping the AFC North together as well, mostly because all four are in the Eastern Time Zone, and because Pittsburgh and Baltimore have such a big rivalry now, and the Ohio teams should stay together. The rest of the teams were just filled in where they fit to make each division have six teams.

NFC East: Philadelphia Eagles, New York Giants, Washington Redskins, Tampa Bay Buccaneers, Dallas Cowboys, San Antonio Missions

NFC Central: Green Bay Packers, Chicago Bears, Detroit Lions, Minnesota Vikings, Carolina Panthers, Atlanta Falcons

NFC West: New Orleans Saints, St. Louis Rams, Seattle Seahawks, Arizona Cardinals, San Francisco 49ers, Portland Seaducks

Reasons for the NFC alignment: Kept NFC East and North together due to rivalries. Placed San Antonio in the same division as Dallas and Portland in the same division as Seattle. As above, the rest of the teams were just filled in where they fit to make each division have six teams.

Teams would play 19 games each: 10 in the division (5 home-and-homes), 6 in the conference not in the division (3 teams from each of the 2 divisions: 2-year rotation), and 3 against the other conference (1 from each division: 6-year rotation). Disadvantages to this are that teams would only play at every stadium in the other conference once every 12 years and that teams would alternate years of having 10 home and 9 away games and vice versa. 

The regular season would last 21 weeks and have 2 bye weeks: one from Weeks 4-10 and one from Weeks 11-17. Teams would be required to have at least 6 weeks between their bye weeks. Starting the season as we currently do, with Week 1 the week after Labor Day, Week 21 would fall on the last Sunday in January. This would place the Super Bowl on the first Sunday in March (or February 29). Even with such a length, a 21-week regular season would be shorter than those of MLB (26 weeks), NBA (25 weeks), and NHL (28 weeks). Football's playoffs under this system would obviously be expanded as mentioned at the top, but would still only take 5 weeks, shorter than both basketball's and hockey's.