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Relegation in North American sports


Jezus_Ghoti

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If there was a relegation system in place they would be in the lower league and would have no shot by rule of winning the real championship. Why go to the games that year, they can't win? It takes the hope for a magical season (like the royals had 2 years ago) away. It would never work in North America.

Kinda like 60% of the AL East :)

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But you can still hope for a magical season. Who says the Blue Jays can't have a magical season and over take the Yankees and Red Sox. However if there was a relegation system in place it take that last bit off small hope away. You as a Blue Jay have a little hope in you but you still have some hope for the season.

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Relegation and Promotion organised leagues wouldn't work in the US and Canada with most existing leagues simply because professional sports teams need so much revenue to operate in the first place. This sort of league works for places like Europe where cities and towns like Kilmarnock or Ipswich have a developed fan base and facilities, but don't have large populations. Teams still survive because they operate on very tight budgets from year to year, with the exception of your Celtic FCs, Rangers FC, Man United, Marsielles, AC Milan.... Those types of teams will always stay in the premier leagues but the rest of the field usually shifts and is in constant rotation with bad teams getting relegated and newer ones being promoted.

The simple economics in North America in terms of professional sport simply do not allow for the uncertainty of relegation and promotion. A total revamp would have to be done, and to be honest, I don't think the North American public would be perceptive to that idea.

Personally, I think it would be kinda cool to see the London Knights (OHL) meet the Maple Leafs or something similar as a non-league tourney.

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There are a nyumber of pronblems with the promotion/relegation system in the american set up.

1 Owners aren't gonna risk voting fopr a system that would risk them severly reducing there revenues.

2 The players unions won't support a system that would ensure  wage reductions for some of there members at the end of each season.

3 Its impractical with the draft system. Who gets to join in the draft?

4. The quality of mionor league venues.

To name but 4 of them.

First of all, most new leagues don't have players unions. I know Arena Football almost had a labor snafu a few years back over that.

The owners might not want it at the top level, but if it gives them an incentive to keep their teams good, then I don't see any reason why they'd oppose it.

Plus, I don't think we're talking about a major league with 30 teams and another "2nd division" with 30 teams as the relegation league. I was thinking more like, a league with 22-24 teams at the most..maybe just 16-20, with a minor league that has 12.

This would make it clear that the top division was the place to be. You could share the TV contract across the board, like currently happens, with say, all the teams in the league.

Because the presumption would be, you'd have so many games going on - and tournaments and other matches - like soccer does in Europe - that there would always be something to cheer for or whatever.

As for the draft, perhaps you'd just drop the draft concept all together. Instead, just have open free agent bidding for teams. Players on top-division teams that get relegated, could have automatic triggers in their contracts that gave the team an option whether to keep or release them.

After all, you figure that those teams would have at least or two players worth keeping at the top level.

Maybe the draft would only happen at the bottom division level, not the

"major league" level, with teams being able to say, make trades or whatever for those players.

Or perhaps, you could have a dispersal draft. Each team would protect a certain number of players at the end of the season, with the rest being entered into a pool, with the new teams entering the top division getting first crack, followed by the rest of the top division.

Then, the bottom division would get their chance to pick from the rest, starting from the bottom, to the new teams that are entering. So, in some ways, they get doubly screwed for getting demoted. But then, oh well. That's why you don't get demoted.

As for rookies and such, you could set a cap on salaries for those players, meaning one team with NY Yankees money, couldn't sign all the rookies available. They'd be limited either to a certain amount of money total (rookie salary cap) or you could restrict the numbers of rookies - again to be entered on a league-wide posting list - and give a certain period of time these players can be signed to top division teams, otherwise, they have to sign with 2nd division teams and cannot be traded until a certain date during the season.

This would ensure both divisions were taken care of and ultimately, survive.

I think it's doable, but again, it'd have to be a league that implemented it from the start. I also think fans would like it, because even if their team is bad, they usually have something to cheer for - and owners would have an incentive to put good teams together or lose their investment.

Imagine that, bringing the true free market to sports!

I can't see a promotion and relegation system working alongside a draft system. Like I say the mechanics wouldn't work satisfactorily. Who would get to choose forst? So most of the talent would either go to the best teams or the worst league. In European soccewr the teams develop there own talent, throuhgh youth teams etc. And thus the whole club is important, not just the first team.

It would be too big a risk for both the league as a whole and the individual teams is why owners wouldn't go for it. Take for instance the 49ers, they would be relegated after the year they had, so every owner would be thinking 'it could happen to us.' So no-one would go for it. The league would not go fdor it, because risking losing the income from one of the big teams would be too much.

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The biggest hinderance to a relegation/promotion system in North American sports is that the minor league teams are generally, by and large, affilated with or owned by the major league clubs. In Europe, the clubs started out independently on their local level, so there's no affiliation between clubs. The only sport in which it might work here is soccer, because of the lack of affiliation. But, again, the television contracts, stadium issues, etc, make that a bit of a stretch.

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