to qualify, nrg will have to win the splyce game, win their semi (rise or fnatic), and hope kungarna beat immortals.

if immortals beat kungarna nrg will probably have to win the whole thing (although they could end up in a tiebreaker for 4th)

the dream is alive but oh man

Yes, but tacking "Chicago" onto (for example) fnatic isn't going to make them the cubs of overwatch. People won't give a shit unless there's some tangible connection to the city. Sports teams have stadiums. So you'd think having the team actually live in the city seems likely, in order to foster local support. That means they'd either play home/away games through the regular season, or online them and not travel until playoffs. Or, like Sideshow said, all hang out in some central hub, and just wear hats with arbitrary city names on them. All these options have pretty immediate downsides, and how it ultimately plays out depends on how Blizzard value quality vs cost.

Uncleswag
I really hope the hour long Q&A tomorrow has some good questions that pertain to the OWL.

For anyone who missed this, they said there would be grassroots systems in place, which could be exciting, and also fielded a weird question about avoiding US sports culture.