Relegation: Can it/would it work?

As interesting an idea as it is, it would never work.

You cannot value a professional baseball team at $100m if the team has the ability to be dropped. Nobody is going to spend on an investment that could potentially lose money. The reason our system works now is because there is such minimal volatility.

 

I was thinking the same thing, except add the Royals to the list too.
Shit, the Chicago Fire got clowned by some USL club not too long ago.
In hockey, I'm pretty sure I can find an AHL team to beat the Blackhawks these days.

 

Possibly, but Alex Gordon's garbage-time hits might be enough to pull the crowns to victory.

 

That's pretty bad, considering the Lynx are last in their division. I was talking more about demographics and geography than anything here though.

 

It would be a good system for college football if they ever went to a playoff system. You could assure that potential playoff teams would only face top competition in their regular season schedule. But money pretty much makes that impossible.

 

I think it could work only if the four big leagues each split in half, into a top league and a lower league.
That way the top league would be the one playing for the Super Bowl, World Series, etc., and the lower league teams would be playing to get into the top league.
Leave the minor leagues out of it.

 

I could see Don Fehr being a big proponent of this...

 

It's like contraction, sounds great in theory just not realistic

 

This is an interesting idea. Makes the concept a little more feasable.
And as you wanted the first and second divisions to grow, you use triple A teams as affiliation contracts expire.

 

Here's where I would disagree with you slightly Buck. If you look at some of the teams in the English Second Division - They call it The Championship but I want to keep this simple - they are either big clubs with big stadia who have simply fallen on hard times, or teams with big aspirations.

Here's a list of this years Premier League teams with stadium capacities. The bolded teams are the ones who got promoted from the second division at the end of last season.

Arsenal 60,355
Aston Villa 42,614
Birmingham 30,034
Blackburn 31,154
Bolton Wanderers 28,101
Chelsea 42, 449
Derby County 33,531
Everton 40,216
Fulham 24,525
Liverpool 45,276
Manchester City 47,715
Manchester United 76,180
Middlesbrough 35,049
Newcastle United 52,389
Portsmouth 20,338
Reading 24,084
Sunderland 48,707
Tottenham Hotspur 36,237
West Ham 35,300
Wigan Athletic 25,138

There are a couple of superstadiums out there with Arsenal, Manchester United and Newcastle all going over 50,000 capacity, and Liverpool is about the join that group, but spending your television money well is the key to staying up in the Premier League. Attendence and gate revenues aren't as critical, as evidenced by teams like Portsmouth, smallest capacity in the league.

 

Fuckabuncha Manchester United, Arsenal and Liverpool!

Another key is good ownership both in the sense of personnel savvy and especially finances.

My favorite English club, Leeds United, had owners that poured money into the club in the late 90s (Leeds was in the Champions League semis, I think) but they overextended badly (through some bad loans contingent on Champions League TV money in '01, but Leeds didn't qualify) and had to sell off the roster roundabout '03 or so to avoid receivership. That model is fine here for the Marlins, et al, of the world because there's no competitive repurcussions. But for Leeds, their gutted side dropped out of the EPL in '04.

They nearly made it back in 2006, but another financial crisis hit in the most recent season and they dropped again to Third Division (or Championship Division 1, whatever it's called this week). Through a lot of hullabaloo over finances and a near liquidation of the club, they not only dropped, but will have a 15-point penalty entering the season.

They're fucked and aren't going to be back in the EPL in the near future.

By the promotion/relegation model, dipshit skinflint owners like David Glass, Carl Nutting, etc., would fall apart pretty quick ... perhaps not as spectacularly as Leeds.

 

To add to that, Leeds' stadium Elland Road has a capacity of 40,242. They have everything a team could need to become a Premier League team again, but because ownership made some god-awful decisions in the mid-to-late 90's, they are at least five seasons away from even sniffing the top flight.

Currently they're in Division 1, which is below the Premier League and Championship, and as Bubbs pointed out will have to overcome a 15-point deduction to even stay in the division. Four teams get dropped from Division 1 every year, meaning they'd need to overtake at least four clubs from 15 points back to stay up.

If they can't and drop to Division 2, you can extend that Premier League timeline to seven years.