SLC is also going to be a challenging place to bring in UFA’s. You have the western conference travel challenges that all teams already face, but now you add in cultural elements that are just not going to be appealing to young men in their late 20’s and early 30’s.
But they have the rich owner, they are more committed to building an arena than anyone else (maybe save ATL) and geographically it makes the most sense for current alignment.
And the 36 team and expanded playoff is inevitable, much as I feel about college football expanding and how it now cheapens the regular season, it makes more business sense to dangle the playoff carrot to get fans to keep showing up. I personally wish it was 82 games and then straight to conference semi-finals , that would make your regular season mean something, but its going the other direction. Will probably have 24 of the 36 teams make some kind of playoffs or play-in.