A story in the new issue of The Atlantic talking about Kansas City’s quest for an NHL and/or NBA team emphasized a point that came up in a discussion with friends a week earlier: American sports need relegation.
Relegation is a practice most notably in soccer leagues in many of the major national leagues, most notably, the English League. Most people know of the Premier League, where elite clubs Manchester United, Liverpool, Chelsea and Arsenal play. Fewer people in the U.S. are aware of the lower divisions, Championship, League One, League Two and Conference, or how they fit together. There are two primary ways this happens, cups and relegation.
With relegation, the bottom three teams in the Premier League at the end of the season are moved down to the Championship division for the next season, and replaced in the Premier League by the top three finishers of the Championship division. This goes on down the ladder. Thus in theory, any team, no matter how tiny, could move up over time to become a “major league” team. In the meantime, they have the FA Cup (which includes all teams) and the Carling Cup (which is limited to higher divisions) which are big, season long, single-elimination tournaments.
Now, this shouldn’t be so hard to picture in American sports. Baseball already has the Majors, AAA, AA, A (though this is complicated in that they are directly linked, allowing the major league team to draw up talent). College sports have Division I (sometimes divided up into two), II, III, etc. Teams do move up and down depending on various factors, but it is not structurally built into the system through championship or league play. Though we may not always see it, there are many minor-leagues out there in any number of sports, playing in smaller towns across the country.
So what does this have to do with Kansas City? Well, the reason they cannot land a team like they want is that individual leagues cannot hold more than 30 or 32 teams effectively (there might be a good argument for even fewer teams, the Premier League has 20 teams) for scheduling and talent pool reasons. Having lower-tier leagues allows for a proliferation of teams wherever they can be supported.
However, there is a problem here. Minor-league teams often struggle to get a fan base. People want to see the best league. This cannot be entirely solved, but certainly linking the leagues and presenting the possibility that your team could make it to the big league or would get scheduled against them in a club tournament would certainly boost one’s attachment to the team.
Another benefit of this system is the ability to pull off international club championships. Americans are often mocked for their propensity to hold “World” Series or Championships that do not involve teams outside of North America. Each year the top teams across Europe play in the prestigious Champions League continental competition and its second-tier cousin, the UEFA Cup. Winners of the Champions League are selected for the FIFA World Club Championship, where a true World Champion can in theory be crowned. This series of international connections can help spread sports globally, something that baseball, hockey and basketball certainly would not struggle to achieve.
It is true that America may never be able to develop the true “local club” feel that England has with its soccer team, becoming passionate about lower-tier neighborhood teams. Our sheer geographic scale makes it hard to have the intimate feel of those teams. But as much as Americans may or may not ever get into soccer, there is reason to think that taking a page out of the soccer playbook would make American-preferred sports more exciting domestically and internationally.
P.S. While we are at it, let’s get rid of college sports and go with the youth academy approach for top talent development. As much as I love my CU Buffs football team, it doesn’t make sense for universities to be in the sport business.
