An integer programming approach was used to find the alignment that minimizes the sum of intradivisional distances. The locations of the cities and the distances between any two of them can be found here.

The choice made by the NFL minimizes the sum of intradivisional distances, given the composition of the AFC and NFC and subject to three additional restrictions:

• Dallas and Washington in the same division as each other,
• Chicago, Detroit, Green Bay and Minnesota in the same division,
• Buffalo, Miami, the New York Jets, and New England in the same division.

A map of the solution in Table 1 is available.

If the AFC and NFC are optimized with no additional restrictions, the optimal value is 41152km, as in Table 3.

If the Houston Texans had been placed in the NFC then the optimal value, with the additional conditions, is 48499km. but the AFC alignment is quite different -- see Table 5.

A team other than Seattle could have been moved from the AFC to the NFC. Given the three additional conditions imposed by the NFL, the best choice is to move are the Kansas City Chiefs. The optimal solution exchanges these two teams in Table 2, giving a value of 48296km. This is 4.3% less than the chosen solution.

If all three restrictions are imposed without assigning each team to a particular conference, the optimal solution has value 37126km, with the alignment given in Table 6.