Why Relegation Battles Are Awesome
Source: AOL SPORTS (Original Article)
American sports teams that suck have never had to worry about falling out of their league. You’ll never hear about the Kansas City Royals dropping into AAA and the Durham Bulls climbing up to take their place.
In European soccer, however, promotion and relegation are a way of life. If a club in Premier League, Serie A or La Liga finishes in the bottom three one season, it gets kicked down to the second division, and it has to earn its way back up to the top flight.
The end result is this: as the Premier League season reaches its finale, clubs at the bottom of the table are playing games that matter. They have to scrap and claw and fight for survival. So when Fulham and Bolton won over the weekend, it gave their fans hope that they might yet avoid the drop.
What were Miami Dolphins fans hoping for last December, besides a quick and merciful end to the season? Did they have to worry about losing their status as an NFL club? No. The Dolphins were going to get prime draft position to get better players and improve their club. Meanwhile, If Fulham gets relegated, it will be forced to sell the contracts of its better players to make up for next season’s lost TV revenue — and we’re talking about a loss of about £40 million here — reconfigure with lesser talent and work its way back up again.
And some Americans think soccer is communist?
Of course, there are reasons that the English system of promotion and relegation doesn’t exist in America — the biggest being geography. When the National League first formed in 1876, baseball owners wanted to avoid a situation where a lot of clubs were located in one or two cities. They created a closed shop where each club became a “franchise” that had exclusive rights to its home city. That way, everyone’s train travel expenses were equal. A club in Pittsburgh didn’t have to face hefty travel bills to play six clubs in New York and three in Chicago.
Obviously, this compare credit card is less of a problem in …continue reading