Promotion and relegation in American sports

One of the things that sets American sports leages apart from European sports leagues is the lack of promotion and relegation, the act of moving teams up and down in a series of leagues bepending on how good they were. So what if the major American sports leagues worked on a promotion and relegation system.

For example, the United States Football Federation (USFF), the governirng body of American football in the U.S., organizes the leauges into a five-tier pyramid, with smaller leauges not included in the pyramid. Expansion teams start in

1. Premier Football Leauge (PFL), 22 teams, bottom four relegated
2. American Football Leauge (AFL), 24 teams, bottom four teams relegated, top four promoted
3. United Football Conference One (UFC One), 24 teams, bottom four teams relegated, top four promoted
4. United Football Conference Two (UFC Two), 24 teams, bottom four teams relegated, top four promoted
5. Southern Football Association (SFA)/Western Football Association (WFA), 22 teams each, bottom four teams relegated, top four promoted, SFA has teams in the South and North, WFA west of the Mississippi
 
Problems...

1) Franchise systems are better for investors cos you don't risk putting lots of money into a team only for it to get relagated.

What I don't know, is how long the system of school->college->full professional has existed. This is important, as for promotion/relegation system to exist, there needs to have been a period with a pyramid system and so that the idea that promotion/relegation is intrinsic to sport gets ingrained.

A pyramid system would change the college draft thing completely, possibly removing it and changing US college sports completely.
 
mishery said:
Problems...

1) Franchise systems are better for investors cos you don't risk putting lots of money into a team only for it to get relagated.

What I don't know, is how long the system of school->college->full professional has existed. This is important, as for promotion/relegation system to exist, there needs to have been a period with a pyramid system and so that the idea that promotion/relegation is intrinsic to sport gets ingrained.

A pyramid system would change the college draft thing completely, possibly removing it and changing US college sports completely.

IIRC, college football existed before professional football. Now if that was changed, and professional football was first, then a pyramid could form. Or several baseball leauges in the late 1800's could have banded together to form a promotion-relegation pyramid, forming a precedent for professional football.

Question for the Brits: is collegel-level soccer/football really big? And how do players enter into the professional leauges?
 
mishery said:
Problems...

1) Franchise systems are better for investors cos you don't risk putting lots of money into a team only for it to get relagated.

What I don't know, is how long the system of school->college->full professional has existed. This is important, as for promotion/relegation system to exist, there needs to have been a period with a pyramid system and so that the idea that promotion/relegation is intrinsic to sport gets ingrained.

A pyramid system would change the college draft thing completely, possibly removing it and changing US college sports completely.

You're far, far more likely to see this developing with baseball. Football isn't a good example. By the time pro football develops, you've already got a solid college game. Until the 1960s-1970s, college football has a far larger following than the pro game, and there's not enough teams to make this idea plausible with football.

Now, baseball, however, has enormous potential. You've already got the farm system, with triple-, double-, and single-A teams.
 

Fyrwulf

Banned
You can't do it with American Football because of the way the NFL is set up. Besides which, there really isn't enough talent to go around. 32 teams is already stretching things, there needs to be a ton of development of the NCAA Division II and Division III plus expansion into foreign markets to even begin to have enough teams to do it.

Besides which, you'd have to convince 32 very conservative billionaires that it was a good idea, and I don't think you could.
 
Fyrwulf said:
You can't do it with American Football because of the way the NFL is set up. Besides which, there really isn't enough talent to go around. 32 teams is already stretching things, there needs to be a ton of development of the NCAA Division II and Division III plus expansion into foreign markets to even begin to have enough teams to do it.

Besides which, you'd have to convince 32 very conservative billionaires that it was a good idea, and I don't think you could.

I was just thinking about that not long after I first posted it. Baseball and hockey would be the best North American sports for a promotion and relegation-pyramid.
 

CalBear

Moderator
Donor
Monthly Donor
The biggest problem with this kind of movement is the difference in Quality that you have in the top professional sports in America.

There simply is insufficient talent to have a second tier league in Football or Basketball, while baseball & hockey have, arguably, already overextended themselves.

One of the great fictions that many Americans hold dear is that the gap between what they see on TV and what they see (or did) in High School or even College sports is small. It isn't. Pick the sport & it's likely that you have never met more than one person who could play at the Top professional level in any of the American 'Big 4". I actually knew two athletes who made it to the NFL for a cup of coffee, and a third who saw the Show for about two weeks. They were all, by far, the best athletes I had ever seen, none of them made it at the top pro level for more than a season.

Folks who think that "if I had just had the right coaching" or "I just played for a bad team, so I wasn't noticed" are out of their minds. The Gap between the TOP college players & the Pros is ten times greater than the gap between top college players and high school benchwarmers. Just look at how few players manage to make the jump from college or from AAA. Pro athletes have been blessed by the sports gods, that is why the get paid more that the GNP of half the countries in the United Nations.

I have always been puzzled how you can successful move teams up & down, as does happen in Soccer and several other pro sports outside of the U.S.

How do the top teams not sign the best talent? If you have a choice of playing in the CBA at $40K or in the NBA at $400K (or $4,000K) which would you chose? On the other side of the coin, if you can run the 40 in 4.08 (uphill, in street shoes) and catch anything out of the air that doesn't sting, why would an NFL team that needs a receiver let you play for the Indoor Football league?
 
Archangel Michael said:
Question for the Brits: is collegel-level soccer/football really big? And how do players enter into the professional leauges?
They have development teams that are owned by the big clubs, much like AAA baseball.

Archangel Michael said:
I was just thinking about that not long after I first posted it. Baseball and hockey would be the best North American sports for a promotion and relegation-pyramid.
It works well in European (ice) hockey, but that’s just within one nation, there’s no pan-European league. Plus unlike soccer, the top talent usually leaves for North America and the NHL.

There certainly is a market for non-elite level hockey in North America. Look at the minor-pro AHL, IHL, ECHL, plus the NCAA, and in Canada the CHL, and even lower leagues like the AJHL, etc.

CalBear said:
There simply is insufficient talent to have a second tier league in Football or Basketball, while baseball & hockey have, arguably, already overextended themselves.
This is true, but matters not. The number of teams in the highest tier need not change. So the NHL might still only have six teams (or some other number), but they wouldn’t necessarily be the original six of OTL. The elite talent pool would only be a few hundred players. Whilst other players would be on lower-tired teams and would be constantly working to improve together to move up a division. This is quite unlike OTL’s system where poor-showing teams are rewarded with the highest draft picks.

How do the top teams not sign the best talent?
They do, but because there is no union or CBA, this players can then be sold to the highest bidder. Teams are NOT, I repeat NOT, run as a business but as a showpiece for billionaire from other industries (see Roman Abramovich owner of Chelsea Football Club).
 

Fyrwulf

Banned
Sir Isaac Brock said:
They do, but because there is no union or CBA, this players can then be sold to the highest bidder. Teams are NOT, I repeat NOT, run as a business but as a showpiece for billionaire from other industries (see Roman Abramovich owner of Chelsea Football Club).


And that's the biggest reason why a pyramid wouldn't work. Pro teams in America are run like businesses because that's exactly what they are. The NFL, for that matter, is run like a business and being a part of the pyramind system wouldn't be beneficial to them. The only other financially solvent football league in America is the Arena Football League and it uses totally different... everything, really.
 
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