Thanks again for following along.
To answer your questions, I agree it really sucks that Pittsburgh lost its basketball team. The Demons logo is nice but had they been forced to stay in Pittsburgh new owner Kevin Oliphant would have renamed them from Ironmen to Demons and they would have had what I think is an equally impressive logo.
It has not been specified by out league commissioner, but I would assume your guess of the Demons playing out of Newark is the correct one.
As it stands the Pittsburgh Demons will live on but as a minor league basketball team affiliated with the New Jersey club. It is much like baseball where Pittsburgh lost its big league team but continues as a AAA club, affiliated with the Detroit Dynamos.
The Pittsburgh Sentinels remain in the North American Hockey Confederation, but they were the worst team in the league last year while perhaps there should also be concern for the survival of the Pittsburgh Paladins football club as they continue to play out decrepit Fitzpatrick Park which is the same stadium that was deemed too outdated for the Miners to remain.
As to why San Antonio went to the Pacific and Denver to the Midwest Division, I am not sure other than the fact there were 4 new teams and one was assigned to each of the 4 existing FBL divisions.
Finally, I asked about the Seattle basketball name change from Emeralds to Jets and the answer was the name was being used by another Seattle team as our commissioner mentioned he named the hockey team the Emeralds. The hockey team, which is part of the Continental Hockey Association and not the long-running NAHC in Seattle is actually called the Chinooks so perhaps he misspoke but the name change could possibly be justified as coming from legal action taken by Lane State University.
The Eugene, OR., school has been known as the Emeralds since the 1930s and perhaps they threatened legal action or even obtained a judgement to force the Seattle pro basketball team to abandon the name Emeralds. Not certain, just spit balling possible reasons to justify the change which also could be as simple as team owner Billy Dobbins just wanted a rebrand.