AHC: Smallest town with surviving major league pro team

The Piedmont Triad gets the Twins in the mid 2000s (which almost happens OTL), and the new ballpark eventually gets put in Randolph or Alamance County due to open space.

Another possibility: Hartford Whalers don't move to Raleigh.
 
The Piedmont Triad gets the Twins in the mid 2000s (which almost happens OTL), and the new ballpark eventually gets put in Randolph or Alamance County due to open space.

Another possibility: Hartford Whalers don't move to Raleigh.

I am confident Hartford is bigger then Green Bay.

But what if instead of them moving to NC they stay in state and move to the Mohagan sun casino's Arena in Montville CT
 
Why is relegation bs, I'm European and all are sports are relegation based and it provides variety and means teams have to adapt rather knowing therell be there next season, in English football pyramid there are roughly 7,000 teams of nearly 5,300 clubs are members of a league in the English men's football league system. Theoretically any of them could enter the top flight and win it.

Relegation would not work in Major League Baseball. The average MLB team owns a triple a, an Double A, a single A and at least one short season or rookie league team. The newly drafted and signed players in baseball are sent to the appropriate level to start their careers. They work their way up until they are on the MLB team. Football in the US does not have a minor league system or any really other teams for that matter that would be able to compete on that level.
 
I am confident Hartford is bigger then Green Bay.

But what if instead of them moving to NC they stay in state and move to the Mohagan sun casino's Arena in Montville CT

It is but not by much - the city itself doesn’t even crack 125,000 and the metro area is less than a million.

And remember, Milwaukee is two hours’ drive from Green Bay. Green Bay is no more a Milwaukee satellite than San Diego is an LA satellite.
 
It is but not by much - the city itself doesn’t even crack 125,000 and the metro area is less than a million.

And remember, Milwaukee is two hours’ drive from Green Bay. Green Bay is no more a Milwaukee satellite than San Diego is an LA satellite.

So Green Bay is not a subburb of Milwaukee since San Diego is not a satellite of LA. (I used to live in SD it has it's own economical drivers etc between the military bases and companies based there) also by that Hartford is a Burb of Boston and NYC since it's two hours from both. I'm from CT and for this challenge I think putting the Whalers in eastern CT would be more along the lines of the challenge

How I think that happens is the team hangs on in Hartford for another decade and change and around 2007 the civic center just can't work anymore the city and state says no to building a new arena and before they move to some other place the Mohegan Tribe / Mohegan sun offer up there almost brand new anreana for the home games it means not holding so many concerts but easy could be done since it host the WNBA team the CT sun's and a indoor lacrosse team .
 
So Green Bay is not a subburb of Milwaukee since San Diego is not a satellite of LA. (I used to live in SD it has it's own economical drivers etc between the military bases and companies based there) also by that Hartford is a Burb of Boston and NYC since it's two hours from both. I'm from CT and for this challenge I think putting the Whalers in eastern CT would be more along the lines of the challenge

How I think that happens is the team hangs on in Hartford for another decade and change and around 2007 the civic center just can't work anymore the city and state says no to building a new arena and before they move to some other place the Mohegan Tribe / Mohegan sun offer up there almost brand new anreana for the home games it means not holding so many concerts but easy could be done since it host the WNBA team the CT sun's and a indoor lacrosse team .

Green Bay is a little different from Hartford since it’s not smushed between two metro areas. The history of the Packers is, as previously mentioned, unique - the Bears had an interest in keeping the Packers around, so they helped engineer the plan that made them fan-owned.

The other thing to remember is that Milwaukee never had its own NFL team (at least not in any recent memory,) so it did in many ways piggyback off Milwaukee despite the fact that it could stand on its own if it needed to (let’s say Milwaukee AND Green Bay had teams - Milwaukee had a more traditional ownership structure while Green Bay had the model we know it for.)

I did just look it up - Milwaukee did have a team in the 1920s that folded due to a $500 fine for using ineligible players. Let’s say that don’t do that or they come up with a way to pay it - the Packers and Milwaukee Badgers would likely have a rivalry with each other and the Chicago Bears to this day (and of someone other than the Bidwills gets the Cardinals, maybe them too - wow, what a region for football.)
 

Ramontxo

Donor
Ok I know the OP has limited this to American Professional Leagues and don't want to derail this (of course when one says this it usually means ejem...). But in a league with relegation Eibar (27.158 people living there in 2016) having descended to Segunda B (Spanish third division) in 2009 has had (an still has) a profesional team in Spanish first division liga against Barsa, Real Madrid Athletic Club etc since 2014 and as a Gipuzkotarra am quite proud of it.
 
2. Any location you pick should be smaller in population, either today or throughout most of the 20th century, than Green Bay, Wisconsin. I’d suggest the Canton Bulldogs but Canton is four times Green Bay’s size now. Rochester and Syracuse also don’t count - both are bigger than Green Bay....
[Separate quote]
And remember, Milwaukee is two hours’ drive from Green Bay. Green Bay is no more a Milwaukee satellite than San Diego is an LA satellite.

You obviouislyi mean the metro area, becasue Canton has shrunk from 115,000 in 1970 to 70,000 now. The Cavaliers played in Richfield for decades but that was still clearly a Cleveland team.

I was going to have some shennanigans where NFL owners were a bit miffed at Clevelan but still wanted to give the area a team so in 1999 the New Brownsare placed in Canton, but I guess that's a bit too close?

Perhaps a better choice is the irresistible Charlie Finley, who threatened to move the Athletics everywhere up to and including the moon if I recall, and finally said to the media that he would move them, "somewhere."

So, let's say he decides to pt them in Omaha - "close enough people can drive if they really want to," he would argue - instead of Oakland becasue the team promises anexpanson of Rosenblatt Stadium after the College World Series moves (it did lose money quite often in it sfirst years there through the '50s) - Finley befriends someone from Nebraska who offers to help him make it "as big as Nebraska Football in Lincoln." True, he can't only draw 20,000 a game but it's still way better than he was doing, and the tie-in works with the A's dynasty drawing lots of fans who have nothing better to do during the summer without football.

Then, in the late '70s, Warren Buffett buys the club and keeps them in Nebraska after their rivalry with the Royals (and of course the Yankees nd other powers being in town) were all that would keep them drawing enough fans. Buffett's purchase in '81 is seen as more of a gimmick, something done just to keep the A's in the area, but baseball doesn't mind because of the riches he has; they know he'll compete. With the attendance waning some in the mid-'80s, and Rosenblatt Stadium getting a bit old (though it's only about 40 years old, Baltimore's Memorial Stadium is about the same age and will be replaced within 10 years), he is the first to use the architecture firm HOK out of Kansas City and build a retro-style ballpark which opens in 1987, just in time for the A's resurgence. Though it's only 38,000 seats, it still draws fans from quite a distance away.

The Nebraska Athletics continue to do well, though U. of Nebraska fans continue to wonder why they keep that weird green and gold and Nebraska's colors are scarlet and white, but they do draw quite a bit from Iowa, too.

(Note: Finley could have moved them somewhere even smaller, but I wanted a place somewhat close where he could try to get away with it by saying people could drive, even if it wasn't true or at least not very easy, and also where someone really rich could buy them and keep them there.)

Anotgher thought - the Boston Bravs were almost evicted in 1934 and looked for someplace else to move. Montreal and Baltimore were considered but eventually theys tayed. Providence had a great history in the majors back in the 1880s, could they have moved there and had their own city with the Red Sox always good in Boston? Could they have stayed? Probably yes to the first, but I don't know about the second.A lot depends on who buys them afterward.
 
What I think you mean is "Smallest Media Market" possible, the Green Bay-Appleton market is ranked 67 with a population of 421,480 the next one down is Roanoke-Lynchburg at 417,200 then Omaha at 405,260.
With that in mind you an owner who is willing to stay in a small market no matter what inducements are offered to move to a larger city, a league that is willing to keep a team in a small market despite the fact that it would get larger television contracts if they could move the team, I think that there was a possibility that the NFL was going to force the Green Bay Packers to move but Congress made it an unspoken condition in order to merge with the AFL that they couldn't force the Packers to move, also you need a large enough season ticket fan base that is willing to travel for 3+ hours each way to attend a game.

Not a chance. The Packers were too popular even outside of Wisconsin. Part of its appeal is that it was a plucky little underdog that made good. If they tried forcing the Packers out of Green Bay there would have been a huge PR and legal war over it and they knew it.
The people of Green Bay would have played it as the big, bad NFL picking on a small community. There would have been egg on their face and they knew it. Besides, the Packers were raking in cash for the NFL so why upend everything?
 
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