NFL Empires: 1944

This is a continuation of my "empire" maps (where victors take the territory of the losers) of the NFL. Different than most such imperialism sports maps, instead of gaining all the loser's land from a victory home or away, the victor only gets territory for an away victory, and just two-thirds of it (or one-third for an away tie).

Due to World War II and depleted rosters, Pittsburgh and the Chicago Cardinals merged teams for one season (known as "Card-Pitt", which sounded a lot like "carpet" if you asked the newsmen). The Cardinals had no land to start the season, but any territory gained by the team was split evenly between the two (not that they won any games). Victorious opponents could take land from either (ie, just Pittsburgh). Philadelphia resumed playing games on their own.

After one year away, Cleveland returned to the league, while Boston was added as an expansion team. I gave the new/returning teams the land within a 100-mile radius of their capitals.

My data was from Pro Football Reference and most of the logos from SportsLogos.net and Sports Ecyclopedia.

Here then is the map of the NFL empires after the 1944 season:

Green Bay (light green) won the championship game over New York (dark blue), played in New York. New York didn't have much land before the game, since the Eastern Division as a whole didn't have much land before the season (and eight of ten games were in their division). Chicago (light blue) and Detroit (purple) tied for second in the West.

Here is the map before the season started:

Chicago is faltering!