Operating a successful NFL franchise in a small market isn’t as easy as the Green Bay Packers would have you believe. Just ask the Buffalo Bills - or, better yet, the Jacksonville Jaguars.

Oddly, Jacksonville -- located approximately 25 miles south of the Georgia border and 340 miles north of Miami -- is Florida’s most populous city. In fact, it’s the twelfth-largest city in the US. Why, then, is it considered a small market?

Demography.

In 1968, the city annexed virtually all of Duval - the county in which it’s situated. While Jacksonville wins the population race in a lot of head-to-head city matchups, comparing it to a metropolitan area is more apt - at which point it tumbles from twelfth to forty-second.

Despite its meager size, Jacksonville made the NFL’s short list when the league announced its intention to expand by two franchises in 1992. The city had a longstanding love affair with pigskin - and the NFL’s top dogs knew it. Every year it hosts the Gator Bowl and nearby college football teams -- the University of Florida's Gators and Florida State's Seminoles -- are followed avidly, almost obsessively.

The Jaguars took the field in 1995 at Municipal Stadium, newly constructed to hold an ambitious 76,000 fans. They got off to a raucous start, leading the league in revenue in their inaugural season, making the playoffs in their second and finishing just behind the Pittsburgh Steelers in the AFC division in their third.

In 1997, owner Wayne Weaver of Nine West fame successfully sold the stadium's naming rights to wireless carrier Alltel. And In 1998 and 1999, the Jaguars won the AFC Central Division title.

From there their luck on the field took a turn for the worse, but Jacksonville’s only major league squad still managed to turn in some respectable performances, most notably in 2005. Unfortunately, the same couldn’t be said for their dwindling fanbase.

Not long after Jacksonville played host to Super Bowl XXXIX -- a coup for any expansion city, not to mention a considerable driver of revenue -- Weaver was forced to cover almost 10,000 seats in order to “fill” the arena - a lost opportunity cost the Washington Post estimated at $200,000. It was the only way to keep the games from being blacked out, because the league steadfastly refuses to broadcast matches that fail to draw capacity crowds.

Adding insult to injury, Alltel didn’t re-up when its naming rights contract expired in 2007 - another blow to the franchise’s bottom line.

Today, the Jacksonville Jaguars find themselves at the top of the list for possible relocation - a rumor that Weaver dismisses. In the aforementioned Post article, he affirms his commitment to Jacksonville -- a city he notes to be growing steadily (by almost 20,000 people a year, according to some estimates) -- but acknowledges the challenges in owning and operating a small-market team.

Los Angeles is the top contender. Football and business enthusiasts alike are given to pose the question: “How does Jacksonville have football when LA doesn’t?”

Although rhetorical, it’s a compelling query. After all, LA is the second-largest market in the US. With its virtually limitless fanbase and corporate sponsors, the Jaguars’ financial woes would melt away.

Some have called for the team to experiment with playing several regular-season games in Orlando in an attempt to widen its fanbase. I guess they think some of that Orlando magic will rub off.