The Dallas Cowboys are in the NFC East with all Northeast teams, the closest of whom (the Washington Commanders) is more than 1,200 miles away — 9 out of 12 other teams in the Conference are closer than that. This was insisted upon during the latest NFL realignment in 2002 in order to preserve long-time rivalries.
The Texas Rangers were in a division consisting of all West Coast teams until the Houston Astros were moved in 2013.
The Dallas Stars were in the Pacific Division along with teams in California and Arizona between 1998 and 2013, until they were realigned (back) into the Central Division with teams in the same time zone (plus the Colorado Avalanche).
The Dallas Mavericks get to be in a division with two other Texas teams, one in New Orleans, and one in Memphis. This division is called the Southwest Division, despite all five teams being in the east half of the contiguous United States.
Many American pro sports teams are not based in the cities they represent, but bordering suburbs. Justified to some extent as they're representing the metropolitan area as a whole, not just the city itself.
The Washington Commanders currently play at FedEx Field in Landover, Maryland, and have their offices and practice facilities in northern Virginia.
The New York Giants and New York Jets don't play in New York (the city OR the state) unless they're playing the Buffalo Bills on the road; their shared home ground at MetLife Stadium is in East Rutherford, New Jersey (this has led combative New Jersey governor Chris Christie to refer to the Jets as the "Jersey Jets" on at least one occasion). And, on top of that, both also have their offices and practice facilities in New Jersey.
The Buffalo Bills have played in the suburb of Orchard Park since 1973.
The Miami Dolphins do play in a city with the word "Miami", but it's Miami Gardens. (It is in Miami-Dade County, but a good distance from the Miami city limits.)
With the opening of their new stadium, the San Francisco 49ers now play next door to their HQ in Santa Clara, which is closer to San Jose than it is to San Francisco.
The Dallas Cowboys haven't played in the Big D itself ever since they left the Cotton Bowl in 1971 (Texas Stadium was in Irving, the current one is in Arlington). They also haven't had their HQ in the Big D for decades; they were in Irving from the move to Texas Stadium until opening their current HQ in Frisco in 2016. Irving is in Dallas County, but Arlington and Frisco are in other DFW counties.
The two Los Angeles teams, the Chargers and Rams, currently play in Inglewood, though that's at least in Los Angeles County. The Chargers started out in 1960 in the old AFL playing in LA proper, but moved to San Diego after their first season. The Rams played in the LA Coliseum from their arrival from Cleveland in 1946 until leaving for Anaheim after the 1979 season. After spending 1995–2015 in St. Louis, the Rams returned to the LA Coliseum in 2016, playing there until SoFi Stadium opened in 2020. While the Chargers returned to the LA area in 2017, they played in Carson (admittedly, in LA County) at the LA Galaxy's soccer stadium until moving in with the Rams. Both teams also have their offices and practice facilities outside the LA city limits—the Rams in Agoura Hills (also in LA County), the Chargers in Costa Mesa (in Orange County).
The Las Vegas Raiders don't play within the Las Vegas city limits; their stadium is in the unincorporated community of Paradise. However, this example splits hairs in that the US Postal Service considers all unincorporated areas in the vicinity of Vegas to have a "Las Vegas" address, and locals normally use "Las Vegas" or "Vegas" to refer to the entire built-up area. That said, the team has its HQ in a suburb that is actually a separate city, namely Henderson.
Major League Soccer has several examples of its own. The New York Red Bulls, like the Giants and Jets, play in New Jersey but have their own home stadium in Harrison. The Philadelphia Union play in Chester, Pennsylvania. FC Dallas plays in Frisco, the LA Galaxy in Carson, and Real Salt Lake in Sandy (which is still in Salt Lake County, so you could take "Salt Lake" as a reference to the county, or even the Great Salt Lake). Sporting Kansas City technically averts the trope, since they do play in Kansas City, although the soccer club plays in Kansas whereas most pro teams in KC play in the larger Missouri city.
Finally averted by the team now known as the Arizona Coyotes in the 2014 offseason. They had been playing as the Phoenix Coyotes in the suburb of Glendale since December 2003. (The Coyotes had played in Phoenix from 1996, when they arrived from Winnipeg, until moving to Glendale.)
Speaking of the NHL, they've pretty much completely averted this trope. Now that the Coyotes have rebranded themselves as an Arizona team, there's not a single team in the league that bears a city name that plays outside its namesake city. The only other teams that play in unmistakably suburban cities either bear the city's name (Anaheim Ducks) or are named for their region (Florida Panthers, who play in the Miami–Fort Lauderdale suburb of Sunrise). That said, at least a couple of teams have their offices and practice facilities outside their eponymous cities—the Dallas Stars in Frisco, and the Washington Capitals in Arlington County, Virginia—and the Vegas Golden Knights play in the aforementioned community of Paradise which has a Las Vegas address.
The Cleveland Cavaliers originally played in the Cleveland Arena until it was torn down in 1974, then they played in Richfield, almost an hour south, for 20 years. However, Gund Arena (now Rocket Mortgage FieldHouse) was built in downtown Cleveland in 1994, and the Cavs have been playing in Cleveland proper ever since.
The Detroit Pistons played in the city of Detroit from their arrival in 1957 until moving to the Pontiac Silverdome in 1978. From there, they went to The Palace of Auburn Hills in 1988.note They did play one 1984 home game in the city of Detroit due to a scheduling conflict, and in the 1984–85 season played 16 games in the city after the Silverdome's inflatable roof collapsed. They returned to Detroit proper in 2017, sharing Little Caesars Arena with the Red Wings.
Also zig-zagged by the San Jose Earthquakes of MLS. They started out playing at Spartan Stadium (now CEFCU Stadium) on the campus of San Jose State University. After the 2005 season, the team left for Houston (becoming the Dynamo), but left their history behind for a new ownership group that emerged in 2007. When the Quakes resumed playing in 2008, they played most of their home games in Santa Clara, with occasional big games in other Bay Area cities, but none in San Jose proper. Finally, in 2015, they returned to their namesake city with the opening of what's now known as PayPal Park.
The Atlanta Braves' 2017 move to the Cobb County venue now known as Truist Park played with the trope. While the Braves no longer play within the city limits, the new stadium has an Atlanta address. Not due to any shenanigans by the Braves; it's simply that the part of Cobb County that's home to the stadium is next to the city of Atlanta and has always been served by an Atlanta post office, since Cumberland is presently not a formally incorporated city.
American sportscasters love to refer to cities either by cliched nicknames that very few locals actually use ("Beantown" for Boston, "Frisco" for San Francisco) or by famous areas of the city that are nowhere near the actual venues used by pro sports teams. One of those, "South Beach" for Miami, was popularized by LeBron James, even though the arena the Miami Heat play in is actually located on the other side of Biscayne Bay from South Beach. It also gets applied to the Marlins (who play even further inland) and the Dolphins (who play many miles northwest in Miami Gardens). Similarly, no Los Angeles pro teams actually play in Hollywood.
Any time a team from Buffalo is shown on national TV you'll see lots of shots of Niagara Falls, along with at least one shot of someone preparing chicken wings and beef on weck. Niagara Falls is actually about 45 minutes away from Buffalo (and an hour away from where the Bills play), and all the parts that tourists would actually want to visit are in Canada.
The Olympic Games are awarded to a city. Despite this, there are usually some events — usually association football, sailing, and surfing (the last of these added for 2020) — that take part many miles away from the host city. This is justified, though, for reasons that vary by sport. Football requires multiple stadiums for group phases and knockout rounds in both men's and women's competitions, with all needing to be above a certain capacity (the host city rarely has more than one that meets FIFA standards). Sailing and surfing need a decent expanse of water, with surfing also needing reliable waves of a certain size, and the host city is rarely a coastal city.note For an extreme example, the surfing competitions at the 2024 Paris Games will be held in the French overseas territory of Tahiti.
US college sports
The Big East Conference, which was originally comprised of all Northeast schools, really went to hell with this after the turn of the century. In an attempt to expand their base (and status as a football conference), they added the University of Louisville, Cincinnati, Chicago's DePaul University and others to make up for the departing Boston College and University of Miami, then they started going after Texas teams like TCU (who eventually went to the Big 12 instead), SMU and the University of Houston and even further west with Boise State University and San Diego State (both of which ended up staying in the Mountain West Conference). They had enough teams to make East and West Divisions and put Philadelphia's Temple University in the West while Louisville and Cincinnati were in the East. All this led to longtime members West Virginia, Syracuse, and Pittsburgh bolting for other conferences, and then seven schools in the conference (dubbed the "Catholic 7"note four of them are the Founding Schools of the Big East Conference in 1979 due to them sharing that denomination) got fed up in 2012 and all left to form their own conference altogether, winning the rights to the Big East name in the process.
As for the conference that the Catholic 7 left behind, which became the American Athletic Conference, it played with the trope for a few years. With Navy joining the league for football only in 2015, The American split into East and West divisions for that sport and started playing a conference championship game. Navy specifically asked to be in the new West Division, despite being located on Chesapeake Bay in Maryland. (Since Navy has a national following and also uses its national schedule as a recruiting tool for the future Navy and Marine officers it trains, geography isn't as big a factor as it is for most other schools.) The divisional setup ended in 2020 after UConn, a founding member of the original Big East, pulled its own "Screw This!" and bolted for the current Big East, parking its football team as an FBS independent.
Speaking of Syracuse and Pittsburgh, in the midst of the conference realignment, both schools settled in the Atlantic Coast Conference, which, as the name suggests, is a conference that consists of schools near the Atlantic coast of the US. While New York, the state that Syracuse is in, is on the Atlantic coast, Pittsburgh is on the wrong side of the Appalachians from that coast. Adding to the madness are the more recent ACC additions Louisville and Notre Dame. Even if one stretched the definitions of Atlantic and coastal, neither school's location (central Kentucky and Indiana, respectively) in the conference makes sense geographically. The ACC took this trope beyond eleven by announcing that it would add San Francisco Bay Area rivals California and Stanford, plus Dallas–Fort Worth school SMU, in 2024.
While we're on the subject of conferences with "Atlantic" in the name, the Atlantic 10 Conference is both geographically and mathematically inaccurate, as it has 15 teams, including Saint Louis, Dayton, Loyola of Chicago, and Duquesne, the latter of which is located in Pittsburgh. It also has two teams in Philadelphia (Saint Joseph's and La Salle) - as noted above, Pennsylvania is not on the coast but Philly is closer to the Atlantic Ocean than some teams in states that are, such as St. Bonaventure in Western New York, so it's debatable whether these two teams count. However, as there's no rational argument that only one of the Philly teams is "Atlantic", that still means there are either nine or eleven "Atlantic" teams in the Atlantic 10, plus four or six others, so you can't even argue it's technically true that there are ten Atlantic teams in the conference.
Subverted with the Ohio Valley Conference. Although none of the teams are located in the state of Ohio, the name refers to the Ohio River Valley, which includes parts of several states, and most of the teams are located within it.
Through 2023–24, the Northeast Conference has had a very indicative name when it comes to its full membership. It has never had such a member south of Maryland or west of Pennsylvania, and most of its current full members are within the Northeast megalopolis. Even the two current outliers, Le Moyne (next door to Syracuse in upstate New York) and Saint Francis (in west-central Pennsylvania), are in generally recognized Northeastern states. This will end when Chicago State joins in July 2024.
Associate memberships (cases where a team's primary conference does not sponsor a particular sport, so they have to join another conference for that sport) are particularly bad, especially when there are few or no conferences in a particular part of the country that sponsor a certain sport.
In field hockey, three California teams (UC Berkeley [aka "California"], Stanford, and UC Davis) are in the America East Conference because there are no other West Coast schools that sponsor the sport. The University of the Pacificnote the one in California; there's also a "Pacific University" in Oregon, but it's NCAA Division III used to be as well before they dropped the sport citing travel challenges. However, with Cal and Stanford now off to the ACC (which sponsors field hockey), it remains to be seen what will happen to UC Davis' team.
In 2007, several men's golf schools formed the America Sky Conference, a single-sport conference centered mainly on the Rocky Mountain states. However, it eventually included Binghamton University (upstate New York) and the University of Hartford (Connecticut). Conference realignment in the early 2010s gave the mountain-centric Big Sky Conference enough men's golf schools to form a league for that sport. The easiest way to form a league was to absorb the America Sky, but the Big Sky could only get an automatic NCAA tournament bid for its team champion if it kept Binghamton and Hartford. Accordingly, the two northeastern schools became Big Sky associates. Both remained Big Sky men's golf members through the 2022–23 season, after which Binghamton moved that sport to the much more geographically appropriate Northeast Conference and Hartford left as part of its transition to NCAA Division III.
In lacrosse, a primarily east-coast sport, Denver plays in the Big East Conference while fellow Colorado school Air Force and another western team, the University of Utah, play in the Atlantic Sun (ASUN) Conference,note The conference used the Officially Shortened Title "ASUN" from 2016—2023. which consists primarily of southeastern teams. ASUN men's lacrosse features several other schools outside the conference's core region—Cleveland State, Detroit Mercy, Lindenwood (out of the St. Louis area, and also an ASUN women's lacrosse member), and Robert Morris (suburban Pittsburgh). All four will will leave ASUN men's lacrosse after the (spring) 2024 season (with Lindenwood dropping the sport entirely), but CSU and UDM won't avert the trope; see below.
Bryant University, which is located in Smithfield, Rhode Island and has most of its sports in the America East which accurately reflects its northeastern location, moved its football team into the Big South Conference in 2022, as the AmEast does not sponsor football. Bryant played the 2023 football season in an alliance between the Big South and the (also geographically inappropriate) Ohio Valley Conference, but will avert this trope in 2024. The football team will move to the very geographically appropriate CAA Football (the legally separate football arm of the Coastal Athletic Association), which features teams in East Coast states stretching from Maine to North Carolina.note Of the CAA Football states, Pennsylvania is the only one that doesn't touch the Atlantic, and it's close enough to the ocean that it's often treated as an East Coast state.
Longwood University, located in Farmville, Virginia, and Appalachian State University, located in Boone, North Carolina, are members of the Mid-American Conference for field hockey, which as the name implies, consists mostly of midwestern teams. This is because their primary conferences, the Big South and Sun Belt respectively, do not sponsor the sport. A third school that's a MAC field hockey member plays with the trope—Bellarmine University, otherwise a member of the ASUN Conference (which also doesn't sponsor field hockey), is in Louisville, a city on the Ohio River that has a long tradition of blending midwestern and southern cultures. Another Virginia school, Sun Belt member James Madison University (Harrisonburg), will join this group in 2024.
The Southland Conference, whose current full members are all in Louisiana and Texas, has one past and several present examples.
In 2015, the SLC formed the Southland Bowling League, a technically separate conference for women's bowling (the NCAA sponsors that sport for women but not men). At the SBL's founding, only two of its members were full SLC members, but most were within the general SLC footprint (including neighboring states). Charter SBL member Vanderbilt was a little outside the SLC footprint, but being in Nashville was still very much Southern. However, two other charter SBL members were far outside the region—Monmouth (out of New Jersey; now a full member of the Coastal Athletic Association) and Valparaiso (in Indiana; now in the Missouri Valley Conference). In 2018, Monmouth bowling left the SBL for the somewhat more geographically appropriate Mid-Eastern Athletic Conference and was replaced by an Ohio school, Youngstown State (full member of the Horizon League). The trope was averted after the 2022–23 season when the SBL agreed to merge into the very geographically inclusive Conference USA. All of the final SBL members were included in the merger.
In 2021, the SLC added five schools as associate members. Two schools that joined for golf were outside the main footprint, but still indisputably Southern—Augusta (from Georgia; men and women) and Francis Marion (from South Carolina; men only). Two other new women's golf members, Delaware State and Maryland Eastern Shore, were in states sometimes considered Southern but more often mid-Atlantic. The fifth wasn't Southern by any stretch of the imagination—NJIT (in full, New Jersey Institute of Technology), which joined in men's and women's tennis. Delaware State and Maryland Eastern Shore left the SLC after only a year when their full-time home conference, the Mid-Eastern Athletic Conference, entered into a partnership with the aforementioned Northeast Conference that saw all MEAC schools that sponsored baseball and men's and women's golf become NEC associates in those sports.
While two associates left in 2022, four others joined, none of them even close to the SLC footprint. The aforementioned Bryant moved its men's and women's teams in golf and tennis into the SLC. Boise State and San Jose State, the only two full members of the Mountain West Conference that sponsored beach volleyball (also a women-only sport at the NCAA level), joined the SLC for that sport. UICnote Illinois–Chicago joined for men's tennis; it had just moved from the Horizon League (which sponsors tennis for both sexes) to the Missouri Valley Conference (which sponsors it only for women). However, it only stayed in SLC men's tennis for a year, moving to the Mid-American Conference.
As for the aforementioned Northeast Conference, its associate membership fell into this trope in the early 2020s. When conference realignment hit the MEAC, the NEC and MEAC entered into the aforementioned alliance for baseball and golf. Most of the new associates were within the general NEC footprint, but new baseball member Norfolk State is somewhat outside the footprint in the southeast corner of Virginia, and new men's and women's golf member North Carolina Central is a bit farther outside it in the Research Triangle region. When the NEC reinstates men's lacrosse in 2024–25, it will pick up four new associates outside the footprint. One of these, VMI, is a bit outside the footprint in Virginia's portion of the Great Appalachian Valley. The aforementioned Robert Morris, a former full member of the NEC, is in suburban Pittsburgh, well to the west of Saint Francis, though still (barely) in the conference's traditional footprint. The other two are the aforementioned Cleveland State and Detroit Mercy, which needless to say are far outside the NEC footprint. Robert Morris will also return to NEC football in 2024.
The OVC may subvert the trope when considering full members, but it dove head-first into it when it established a new men's soccer league starting with the 2023 season. The new league started out with eight members, evenly divided between full members and associates. The four associate members all exhibit this trope to at least some degree. Chicago State may be in an Ohio River state, but it's all the way at the opposite end of the state and in a totally different watershed (that of the Great Lakes). Liberty is in Virginia, whose southwestern parts are in the Ohio watershed, but is on the opposite side of the Appalachians; its home city of Lynchburg is on the James River, which drains into the Atlantic through Chesapeake Bay instead of the Gulf of Mexico. The others are Houston Christian and Incarnate Word, respectively in Houston and San Antonio. Chicago State ended up playing only the 2023 season in OVC men's soccer; it will become a full member of the also geographically inappropriate NEC in 2024.
Lower NCAA divisions (II and III) have examples as well, including a particularly crazy one: the Great Northwest Athletic Conference shut down its football league after the 2021 season, by which time only three of the 10 full members still played football—Central Washington, Western Oregon, and Simon Fraser, the last of which is the only Canadian member of the NCAA (it's in the Vancouver suburb of Burnaby). These schools were also the only D-II football schools west of Colorado, making any conceivable conference home problematic at best. SFU had an added problem of COVID-related border crossing restrictions. These schools ended up parking football in the Lone Star Conference, named after Texas' longstanding nickname and featuring mainly schools from that state (or bordering states). In the 2022 season, SFU played its "home" games south of the border in Blaine, Washington, 25 miles/40 km from campus, due to said border restrictions. The LSC was apparently willing to put up with the Oregon and Washington schools, but decided SFU was too much of a headache and kicked the Red Leafs out of the conference, effective at the end of the 2023 season. SFU responded in April 2023 by dropping football entirely, effective immediately.
American Football
The NFL, up until the 2002 realignment, was an exercise in geographical insanity. Of the five teams in the NFC West division in 2001, three of them (New Orleans Saints, Atlanta Falcons, Carolina Panthers) were Southern cities while the Arizona Cardinals of the NFC East were the westernmost team in the NFC after the San Francisco 49ers. There are still a few oddities present today (the Indianapolis Colts of the AFC South are farther north than the Baltimore Ravens of the AFC North; also, prior to the Los Angeles Rams' re-relocation from St. Louis, they were east of the NFC East's Dallas Cowboys but in the NFC West), but for the most part, the current alignment makes a lot more sense.
Somewhat justified, as the Cardinals had moved from St. Louis in the late '80s, and when the Panthers came into existence in 1995, the NFC West had an open spot, having only four teams to the other divisions' five. And when the AFL and NFL merged, the new NFC alignment was drawn out of a hat.
The Cowboys remain in the NFC East solely because of their longtime rivalries with the Washington Commanders and Philadelphia Eagles.
NFL geography has been somewhat jacked up since 1953, with the Baltimore Colts joining the Western Conference. It got worse with the 1967 realignment into four divisions, with teams going all over the place. Oddly enough, one 1967 division remains intact (and geographically reasonable) to this day: the Central Division, which de facto became the NFC Central, and since 2002 has been the NFC North. The division has had Chicago, Detroit, Green Bay, and Minnesota the entire time (adding Tampa Bay from 1977-2001).
The Carolina Panthers are considered a regional franchise, representing both North and South Carolina.note They play at Bank of America Stadium in Charlotte, North Carolina, which sits on the state line between the two states. The Panthers hold their training camp in Spartanburg, South Carolina on the campus of Wofford College (of which the Panthers' founding owner Jerry Richardson is an alumnus), and the team played its first season at Clemson University in the South Carolina city of the same name. One time, Nike accidentally printed T-shirts with South Carolina identified as North Carolina.
Association Football
Despite having Grimsby in their name, Grimsby Town actually play their home games in the neighbouring town of Cleethorpes and have done so since 1899.
Australia was tired of winning the Oceania qualifiers only to lose The World Cup playoff, so they moved to the Asian confederation.
Kazakhstan is also in Asia but switched from the AFC to UEFA in 2002.
Given that Suriname and Guyana are already odd countries in South America and culturally identify closer to the Caribbean (plus the other teams are much stronger), they play in the North/Central America zone. French Guyana is also a member of CONCACAF, but not FIFA as they are still part of France (thus they can't go to the World Cup).
As many of the Asian members, most notably several Muslim-majority countries, refuse to acknowledge the existence of Israel, they play the European qualifiers instead in the FIFA World Cup. The winner of the 1958 CAF/AFC (Africa and Asia) qualifier for the FIFA World Cup, for example, was Wales, which decidedly is not in either of those continents, as everyone else in the final round had refused to play Israel and thus a European runner-up was brought in instead, as FIFA refused to allow a country other than the host and defending champions to qualify without playing a match.
The famous blunder of soccer player Andreas Möller when asked about his new team: Milan or Madrid as long it's Italy (it's the former, by the way).
The New Saints, the most successful football club in the Welsh Premier League, are based in Oswestry, which is near the Welsh border, but definitely in England. It turns out that this arrangement is justified—in 2003, Oswestry's former club, Oswestry Town, voted to merge into TNS. The merged club chose to play at Oswestry's larger ground. Making it even more justified is that Oswestry Town, despite its English location, had long played in the Welsh league system.
On a similar note, six Welsh clubs - Cardiff City, Colwyn Bay, Merthyr Town, Newport County, Swansea City and Wrexham - play in the English leagues (Cardiff and Swansea both competed in the English Premier League in the 2010s). Teams from counties on the English side of the England/Wales border also used to be allowed to take part in the Welsh Cupnote although, in the event of one winning, they weren’t allowed to enter the European Cup Winners’ Cup; that place went to the best placed Welsh team. This stopped happening in 1996, when the Welsh FA banned them from taking part.
One of the football tournaments in England and Wales is the EFL Trophy, which is currently open to teams from Leagues One and Two and is further divided into Northern and Southern Sections. It is not unknown for Cambridge United to be placed in the Northern Section and Peterborough United in the Southern Section — despite Peterborough being north of Cambridge.
Scotland has a similar competition to this, which, since the 2018/19 competition, has featured eight guest teams - two each from England, Northern Ireland, the Republic of Ireland and Wales.
The Copa América usually has only the 10 South American countries of CONMEBOL. Between 1993 and 2019, to make for a better format more competitors were invited to make 12 (or 16 in 2016), usually from North and Central America... aside from Japan and Qatar, straining the definition of "América". 2021 would've had Qatar and Australia before they withdrew, as COVID-19 postponed the World Cup qualifiers enough to cause scheduling conflicts.
Baseball
The annual championship series of North American-based Major League Baseball played since 1903 between the American League (AL) champion team and the National League (NL) champion is called "The World Series" — though in fact one or two places other than the United States and Canada exist in the world, and some of them even play baseball. Averted by Little League Baseball, whose World Series tournaments all feature teams from around the world.note In the current regional setup, established in 2022, the flagship tournament, the Little League World Series (for players 12 and under), features 20 teams. Ten are U.S. regional champions. Canada, Mexico, Japan, and Australia send national champions every year. Four larger regions also send champions each year—the Caribbean (restricted to islands in that area), Latin America (apart from Mexico and the Caribbean), Europe and Africa, and Asia–Pacific and Middle East (excluding Japan and Australia). Cuba, Panama, and Puerto Rico fill two berths on a rotating basis; two send their national champions, while the third plays in its normal region (Caribbean for Cuba and Puerto Rico, Latin America for Panama).
From 1969 until Major League Baseball expanded and reorganized divisions in 1994, the Cincinnati Reds and the Atlanta Braves were in the National League West division, while the St. Louis Cardinals and the Chicago Cubs were in the NL East. This was solely to ensure the Cubs and Cardinals were in the same division due to their rivalry. Why they couldn't have both gone to the West and made things much easier is anyone's guess — the stated reason was that the Cubs and Cardinals, by being placed in the NL East, would get more games against the Philadelphia Phillies and New York Mets, which would result in a more lucrative schedule (whether that meant more fan interest against the big cities of the Northeast where baseball was most strongly-rooted or an easier schedule in a division with a Phillies team whose history is dearth of success (at that point, the Phillies had won two NL pennants and zero World Series in 81 years of play) and a seven-year-old Mets team whose best finish up to then was 9th place out of 10 is not clear — it could be both). Outside of that, the league also had competitive balance concerns about placing the top three NL teams from the 1968 season (the Cubs, Cardinals, and San Francisco Giants) in the same division (only division winners played postseason baseball — the Wild Card would first be used in 1995).
Here's a fun one from Major League Baseball: the Angels started off as the Los Angeles Angels (named after the city itself) and actually played in Los Angeles. Just before moving to a newly constructed stadium in the suburb of Anaheim, they changed their name to the California Angels, which was less specific but had the advantage of being true for both the remainder of their time in LA and after the move to Anaheim. But then Disney bought the team and extensively renovated the stadium, with the City of Anaheim putting up some of the funding ... and contractually obligating the Angels to incorporate the city name in the team name. So they became the Anaheim Angels. Then a new owner realized Los Angeles was a much bigger market and the team was renamed the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim, honoring the contract in the letter if not in the spirit. That's still the official name, though in practice they're generally just called the Los Angeles Angels.
In 2015, the official T-shirts for MLB's division champions included a silhouette of the team's home city skyline printed on the front. The AL West Champion Texas Rangers received shirts with the Dallas skyline printed on them. This did NOT go over well with the people of Arlington, where the team has played since moving to Texas in 1972; such a snit was raised that MLB chose not to make any more shirts after the original shipment.
In 2018, the Augusta GreenJackets of the South Atlantic League, which then played at the Single-A level and is now in the Low-A level,note Before the 2021 reorganization of Minor League Baseball, Class A was split into three levels, with "Single-A" being in the middle of the three. The reorg collapsed those three levels to two. moved into a new ballpark in North Augusta, South Carolina, a suburb directly across the Savannah River from downtown Augusta, Georgia.
Basketball
In his first press conference after being drafted by the Utah Jazz, Karl Malone told the Salt Lake City media how happy he was to be in "the city of Utah".
When the Dallas Mavericks faced the Utah Jazz in the 2001 NBA playoffs (the Mavs' first playoff in 11 years), Dirk Nowitzki caught flak for saying how Dallas was going to the "city of Utah". True, Nowitzki is German, but he'd been in the league three years at that point and the Mavs and Jazz were in the same division at the time. Then again, Nowitzki might have made the remark to troll Malone, who was still playing for the Jazz.
Hockey
The NHL had quite a bit of it once changed into Western and Eastern conferences: the Pacific Division had Phoenix (like in the eponymous NBA division, where the Suns are the only non-California team), and Dallas, closer to most eastern teams than California; and the Columbus Blue Jackets was also in the Western Conference (Detroit being in the West was justified by both its location and the rivalry with Chicago). Then came the realignment where a division consisting mostly of Northeastern US/Canada teams has also the Florida ones (though at least it's been renamed from the "Northeast" to "Atlantic" Division...note Which many complained was also a misnomer: Boston and Florida border the ocean, but most are instead around the Great Lakes — Buffalo, Detroit, Montreal, Ottawa, and Toronto — while Tampa Bay is near the Gulf of Mexico which forced the hitherto "Atlantic" Division to be renamed the "Metropolitan".).
Their woes began from the very moment they expanded beyond the "Original Six" teams. To make sure people would tune in to the Stanley Cup—and to guarantee an O6 team would be in said finals—the Eastern Conference was composed of Boston, Toronto, Montreal, Chicago, New York, and Detroit, and the Western Conference was Oakland, Los Angeles, Minnesota, St. Louis...and Pittsburgh and Philadelphia, two cities that are further east than some of the Eastern Conference teams.
In the 2020-21 season, due to the COVID-19 pandemic, it happened again with the temporary realignment: the Central division included Carolina and the two Florida teams. Meanwhile, the St. Louis Blues were in the West division, despite being east of Dallas, which were in the Central.
Two teams in the minor league ECHL, the Atlanta Gladiators and Kansas City Mavericks, do not play in their namesake cities, instead playing in smaller arenas in the suburbs. The Gladiators play in Duluth, Georgia whereas the Mavericks play in Independence, Missouri. The two teams originally averted the trope, originally named the Gwinnettnote after Gwinnett County, where Duluth is located Gladiators and Missouri Mavericks respectively; the two changed their region identity to reflect the metropolitan areas they play in.
On a college level, the Air Force Academy, which is located in Colorado, was in the Atlantic Hockey Association, which as its name implies, exists for ice hockey only, from 2006 to 2024. it's now in the somewhat weird construct of Atlantic Hockey America, created after the 2023–24 season by the merger of the men-only Association with the women-only College Hockey America.
Auto racing
The NASCAR track known as the Charlotte Motor Speedway is not in Charlotte, North Carolina, but instead in Concord. which is not even in the same county as Charlotte. Its location in Cabarrus County puts it just across the county line from Mecklenburg County, the county that contains Charlotte. Not only that, but the Charlotte city limits are only a few miles away. As Charlotte is by far the more well-known city, well...
Similarly, the Milwaukee Mile is neither located in the city of Milwaukee (although West Allis, where the track is actually located, is still in Milwaukee County) nor is it a true mile.
Indianapolis Motor Speedway is not located in Indianapolis, Indiana proper, but an enclave within the city known as Speedway. Given that the city of Speedway is surrounded by the city of Indianapolis, this example splits hairs somewhat.
Talladega Superspeedway is a lot closer to Lincoln, Alabama and Interstate 20 than it is to the town of Talladega, Alabama. Its name still makes sense as it is located in Talladega County.
Atlanta Motor Speedway is not in Atlanta, Georgia, but in the town of Hampton in Henry County, two counties away from Fulton County where Atlanta is located. Henry County is still part of the Atlanta-Sandy Springs-Roswell, Georgia Metropolitan Statistical Area, so the name still fits.
In Formula One, the San Marino Gran Prix was in the Italian city of Imola, 98 km from said micronation (this happened because the owners of the Imola circuit didn't want to lose their place in the calendar, and asked the Automobile Club of San Marino to apply for a race). Ditto the Luxembourg Grand Prix at the German track Nürburgring, 80 kilometres (50 miles) from the Germany–Luxembourg border.
While on San Marino, MotoGP had a San Marino GP that has since incorporated the name of the Italian region where the race actually happens, San Marino and Rimini Riviera GP. And that's not counting how four times the San Marino GP was in Tuscany, even more distant from the micronation than Imola.
