American Relegation

[Lowerdeck]

In Europe, football uses a system of tables and points in order to determine ranking for the season. As an added bonus, the top teams get to play against the best clubs from other countries. And as a warning shot, the teams at the bottom of the standings get dropped to the next level.

In America, to shake up a sport, perhaps the system of relegation should be introduced. It would prevent like teams like the Boston Celtics from losing year after year, tanking in order to get better players. However, some sports like the NFL, MLS, and NBA do not have levels upon levels underneath them.

This leaves the NHL and MLB as eligible. With the system of relegation, we see new teams enter the major leagues on a consistent basis, and every team will strive to keep on their level and try to advance further on the table and in importance.

Take the NHL: Imagine what it would be like if Philadelphia, Phoenix, and Los Angeles got relegated to the AHL for next season. Granted, there would be a lot of pissed off fans. But, these teams have new motivation to improve. Meanwhile, the NHL gets to see new teams and new cities: Hershey (PA), Manchester (NH), and Scranton/Wilkes-Barre (PA).

Take Major League Baseball: Imagine if Tampa Bay, Kansas City, and the Cubs got sent down to AAA. The entire team. Getting replaced with Tucson, Toledo (OH), and Round Rock (TX). Meanwhile, the worst in AAA gets dropped to AA and replaced with the best teams down there.

With hockey and even more so baseball, the contractual status of minor league affiliation would need to be dropped, where every player on the team is for that one club only and not able to be moved up or down in the system at free will. Transfer fees would need to apply, as is European football.

The more likely sport to pull a system like this would be hockey, even though baseball is deep enough to do a system similar to England with football. A system of relegation could spice up the NHL, make it pass the NBA as the #4 sport league in North America.

I know this would never happen in reality. But, opinions anyone?

[gunnar hendershow]

It would be the greatest thing to ever happen to American sports. Unfortunately it's a financial impossibility. But still, if this happened it would add so much MORE to care about for shit teams as opposed to, in baseball, just giving up on the team come June. Relegation battles are thrilling, a bit embarassing, but thrilling nonetheless.

[Reflecto Is My Favorite Poster]

Relegation would be awesome, but the risk would be obvious due to a few major reasons:

1- TV rights

Television needs to make sure that it can get some fanbases in the really major cities (the biggest reason there's the problem of Los Angeles not having an NFL team.) If you take three teams from larger cities one year and demote the team to the minor leagues for a much smaller market (MLB being a good option: In your idea, a team from Chicago [one of the biggest cities in the US] would be replaced in the major league by a team from Round Rock, Texas [a town that clearly couldn't support baseball as much.]

2- Minor league systems

This is the biggest problem for your plan- specifically, the concept of this. Minor leagues are meant as developmental feds for young prospects for most teams. Somehow, the plan of a team with a good crop of minor leaguers having to be traded en masse for lesser players on another team could be a problem- but any other way would defeat the purpose. (In addition, there is the inherent problem of bad teams with good farm systems to defeat the point: The best example you've given was in the NHL [Manchester, NH's team is the AHL affiliate of Los Angeles- who's to say that the Kings wouldn't just promote all the "LA" players to Manchester and demote all the Manchester players to "LA", defeating the entire purpose again?)

[The Kraig]

I think it's something that definitely needs to happen, in football/soccer anyways. But the US football system is very odd. None of the clubs actually contract their players, it's the MLS that contracts the players and those players are sort of assigned to clubs. Which doesn't happen anywhere else in the world as far as I know. The clubs don't seem to be run independantly, and so any team being relegated would have no players (because the players would still belong to the MLS, not the team that was relegated), am I right?

Until the clubs can contract their own players and staff independantly, and the odd trading rules are abolished, it will allow the league to function without all of the things that seem to limit it. The draft and the east/west league table split while quite unique to MLS, do not betray the freedom and purpose of the league, which is to find who is the best football club in the United States. A relegation play-off would probably be the best thing for introducing relegation to the MLS, as a team may be the worst team in the MLS, but give it a chance to prove it deserves to stay in the MLS by having them face off against regional league winners, like:

Worst MLS team (least points achieved in the normal season) and maybe the top three teams from the USL First Division. With a mini-tournament to decide who gets to play in the MLS next season. If it's only three teams then they could do a mini-league to decide. Or they could just have the USL First Division champions vs the MLS' worst team in one big match at a neutral venue, 90 minutes, extra time and penalties if needed. It just adds much more drama and allows for a clear and deserved team to be allowed to compete in the MLS the next season.

I really wasn't intending to type so much...oh well.

[Cactus Drags]

This is the biggest problem for your plan- specifically, the concept of this. Minor leagues are meant as developmental feds for young prospects for most teams. Somehow, the plan of a team with a good crop of minor leaguers having to be traded en masse for lesser players on another team could be a problem- but any other way would defeat the purpose. (In addition, there is the inherent problem of bad teams with good farm systems to defeat the point: The best example you've given was in the NHL [Manchester, NH's team is the AHL affiliate of Los Angeles- who's to say that the Kings wouldn't just promote all the "LA" players to Manchester and demote all the Manchester players to "LA", defeating the entire purpose again?)

[Trey]

I think it would be a horrible idea, especially for baseball. There is a reason that Roger Clemens, who is a Yankee, was pitching in the minors. Because he wasn't ready for the majors yet. Also, each team in the minors is just the farm system for another team, it's not an entirely separate team, at least that's what I think.

[JStarr]

I think it would be a horrible idea, especially for baseball. There is a reason that Roger Clemens, who is a Yankee, was pitching in the minors. Because he wasn't ready for the majors yet. Also, each team in the minors is just the farm system for another team, it's not an entirely separate team, at least that's what I think.

Yeah, each major league team has a AAA team, a AA team, three or four A teams, and so on.

I've batted around the thought of baseball relegation for several years, ever since I first got into the Premier League, which would have been around 2000, I believe. My whole concept merely involved a league for the small-market teams to start with, and a league for the big market teams (Yankees, Cubs, Red Sox, Braves, etc.). Using all the minor league teams as well would be excellent, but there would still be some of the financial constraints that have English football clubs peaking at a certain level. There's only so much money that could be charged before fans decide that a sub-standard field just isn't worth going to, and things of that sort.

It'd be an awesome system, and I'd love to see the Yankees dropped down to AA somehow, but yeah, there'd be logistical nightmares all over the place.

Hockey might actually work better for a system like that, but even teams like Philly and the Rangers seem to have hard times drawing fans in, let alone a Manchester or Hershey. There is the extra idea there of a Club World Cup sort of thing, facing off against Russian or Swedish clubs every year or two, which would be cool. All baseball really has is Japan, as far as I know.

[Guest Mr. Potato Head]

Economics prevent it from happening. If a major-league team gets relegated, they'll suddenly find themselves unable to sell out their arena/stadium, while the promoted minor-league team won't be able to sell enough tickets (as their arena/stadium is too small) to satisfy the league.

[Matt]

^ Surely that could be solved by giving the promoted team a bonus to expand their stadium. Without relegation, you have nothing to lose, and there's nothing to win. Sure you can win your league, but if there's still 3 leagues above you, your team can never expand and try to beat those teams. It'd have to be slowly introduced, you couldn't just decide one season that there'll be 3 teams going up and down, but maybe start ploughing a little more money into the second league 3/4 years before, making sure that all the teams are better equipped for a step up for if they win the league (initially, only one team should be promoted). Then over time, make that apply to all leagues within the sport, slowly working down until you get to the grass roots, then make it 2 teams who go down - possibly.

[lanky316]

That's the problem with the American sports system though, it's not about the teams, or the entertainment for the people involved it's about the money for the organisers. With European sports, although you'd be an idiot to suggest people aren't in it for money, whether a team is making a big profit or not isn't the problem.

Look in the Premiership, there are teams there with half full stadiums every week in the top flight and have been for a while, this is partly due to TV hand outs but if the level is good enough, people will still watch it. If the MLB is so big, the armchair fans aren't going to mind (unless their team aren't involved) too much, if they can still watch good sport. Yeah the big boys help with drawing in punters but there'll still be people happy to watch good sports and if the big boys are low enough to get relegated then someone will take their place. Look at Blackburn and Chelsea, 12 years ago one of them were up there as a top team, it wasn't the one who are now, who historcially are a fairly small side.

I think the fact that the US has it's system (which to a large extent DOES work) makes it near impossible for this style to work. I still think had it been more about clubs then the league it would do but they can't possibly rework everything without a huge overhaul.

[gunnar hendershow]

I think it would be a horrible idea, especially for baseball. There is a reason that Roger Clemens, who is a Yankee, was pitching in the minors. Because he wasn't ready for the majors yet. Also, each team in the minors is just the farm system for another team, it's not an entirely separate team, at least that's what I think.

That's why you have Reserve squads and Under-21 squads. Problem solved.

[Trey]

For each team? That would be hundreds of teams, something that baseball just doesn't have the talent pool to handle.

[Matt]

As you get to lower leagues, no, just in the top few leagues. A lot of the youths overlap with reserves anyway.

[Trey]

Ah, ok. Still, how many separate ran teams would be needed for this?

[Cactus Drags]

Economics prevent it from happening. If a major-league team gets relegated, they'll suddenly find themselves unable to sell out their arena/stadium, while the promoted minor-league team won't be able to sell enough tickets (as their arena/stadium is too small) to satisfy the league.

[Trey]

How is it? Teams now can't sell out their arenas most of the time in the MLB and NHL, how is getting told your team isn't good enough for the big leagues not going to turn people away?

[Typical Phenom]

Trey's right. Mediocre and sub-par teams don't sell out as is, fans tend to be fairly fickle creatures. Once a team drops a level? There's no way you're selling out.

And someone, I think it was Matt, said that teams could build bigger stadiums when they're moved up to the major league? Aside from the fact that stadium deals start years in advance, they are generally funded by tax money. Stadium bills already have a hard time passing in a lot of markets, it'd become near impossible to pass a bill with no guarantee that your team is going to be in the majors. Not to mention sponsorships and whatnot.

And the TV rights that someone else brought up. Imagine if the Astro's got relogated and replaced by the Toledo Mudhens or something. All of a sudden, baseball's losing out on broadcast money in a top 10 market? That's a LOT of revenue lost. And if they do keep showing Astros games, there's going to be a significant ratings drop because the level of competition isn't there. No longer are players seeing Pujols, David Wright, and Bonds...they're seeing players they don't know.

I like relogation and I think it works great in the rest of the world, but the US is just spread out too much in my opinion. I'm not an expert on a map of England, but aren't all the teams fairly close to each other? Whereas in states, if your team gets relogated, you might lose out on MLB baseball altogether. For me, if the Mariners got relogated, the closest team to me now becomes the San Francisco Giants, two states and 12 hours away. Hopefully, that makes sense, otherwise I just rambled a lot...

[Stone Cold]

And the TV rights that someone else brought up. Imagine if the Astro's got relogated and replaced by the Toledo Mudhens or something. All of a sudden, baseball's losing out on broadcast money in a top 10 market? That's a LOT of revenue lost. And if they do keep showing Astros games, there's going to be a significant ratings drop because the level of competition isn't there. No longer are players seeing Pujols, David Wright, and Bonds...they're seeing players they don't know.

[Green Demon]

I doubt that teams would just let stars join other teams based on how the contracts currently are in Professional sports here in the US. I just doubt that regulation could work in any of the professional leagues that are already establish because they have been running this way for close to 100 years in terms of baseball atleast and the casual fan wouldnt keep track of a team that gets sent down. The only way that regulation would work would be if a new league came about and regulations was built into the system.

[Lowerdeck]

In your idea, a team from Chicago [one of the biggest cities in the US] would be replaced in the major league by a team from Round Rock, Texas [a town that clearly couldn't support baseball as much.]

Round Rock is just outside Austin, which is somewhere like the 15th largest city in the country. Granted, it would be an embarassment that the Cubs got dropped... but that would just get them reorganized to stop fielding an embarassment. And there's always the White Sox in Chicago.

The best time for this probably would have been right after the hockey strike, with the NHL. Just reorganize everything.

That would be a lost cause now. The most likely to pull it off would be MLS, and that's a weird system they run there. And I don't know what (if any) the minor leagues look like.