Relegation comes to NCAA football?

[budwom]

Interesting article in which various proposals are discussed concerning how non Power 5 football teams could ascend and P5 doormats descend, a la the English Premier League. Relegation!

Seems overwhelmingly far fetched, but a somewhat entertaining read:
https://www.espn.com/college-footbal...tion-promotion


Of course Duke football pre Cutcliffe would have been ripe for relegation...

[Mtn.Devil.91.92.01.10.15]

Interesting article in which various proposals are discussed concerning how non Power 5 football teams could ascend and P5 doormats descend, a la the English Premier League. Relegation!

Seems overwhelmingly far fetched, but a somewhat entertaining read:
https://www.espn.com/college-footbal...tion-promotion


Of course Duke football pre Cutcliffe would have been ripe for relegation...

I've always found the concepts of relegation and promotion fascinating. I don't know that there are many US sports that it would fit, other than MLB.

[chrishoke]

Relegation doesn't make much sense in multi-sport college conferences.

[budwom]

Relegation doesn't make much sense in multi-sport college conferences.

yeah, little in the article seems realistic, what with contractual obligations, TV, etc...but the problems some teams have are genuine (as articulated by UCF for example)..

[uh_no]

Relegation doesn't make much sense in multi-sport college conferences.

I'm beginning to think schools may realize football should be separate from everything else. Costs for all the other sports skyrocketed with the football realignment.

[budwom]

I'm beginning to think schools may realize football should be separate from everything else. Costs for all the other sports skyrocketed with the football realignment.

Colleges seem to run their athletic budgets like many of us run our household budgets. When they have more revenue, they spend it, and rarely think in terms of greatly reduced future income.

We've seemingly hit Peak ESPN, and Peak ESPN revenue along with it...

[devildeac]

I think it would be a great idea for ACC-MBB after the results of the 2019-2020 season.

[arnie]

Colleges seem to run their athletic budgets like many of us run our household budgets. When they have more revenue, they spend it, and rarely think in terms of greatly reduced future income.

We've seemingly hit Peak ESPN, and Peak ESPN revenue along with it...

You meant how my wife runs our budget (but to her credit, she’s never spent more than we bring in). Thankfully, she doesn’t access this Board😀😀

[cspan37421]

I spent a bit of time growing up in the UK, and the promotion/relegation system always made sense to me, and seemed to be a good way of keeping things interesting for small-market teams. The alternatives (luxury tax, salary caps, revenue sharing etc.) felt to me more artificial and constrained.

Translating that to college sports, esp. in light of conferences and TV contracts, is not so easy.

[75Crazie]

I spent a bit of time growing up in the UK, and the promotion/relegation system always made sense to me, and seemed to be a good way of keeping things interesting for small-market teams. The alternatives (luxury tax, salary caps, revenue sharing etc.) felt to me more artificial and constrained.

I do not agree with some of this. The Premier League is a definite two-tier (at least) league, with the big 6 (ManU, ManCity, Chelsea, Arsenal, Liverpool, Spurs) winning the bulk of the league championships (all but two since 1992) and spending the bulk of the money, and everybody else who for the most part is jockeying for at most one Champions League entry and a couple of Europa League entries. Relegation is not a part of the big 6 vocabulary at all, while it can be financial disaster for those other teams who do go down. I for one like the parity that is added in those American sports that have some sort of salary cap or equivalent.

On the other hand, the Leicester story of four years ago was certainly enthralling.

[uh_no]

I do not agree with some of this. The Premier League is a definite two-tier (at least) league, with the big 6 (ManU, ManCity, Chelsea, Arsenal, Liverpool, Spurs) winning the bulk of the league championships (all but two since 1992) and spending the bulk of the money, and everybody else who for the most part is jockeying for at most one Champions League entry and a couple of Europa League entries. Relegation is not a part of the big 6 vocabulary at all, while it can be financial disaster for those other teams who do go down. I for one like the parity that is added in those American sports that have some sort of salary cap or equivalent.

On the other hand, the Leicester story of four years ago was certainly enthralling.

the premier league is one of the better off ones, too. Most leagues only have a couple of teams who are competitive

Bundesliga: bayern with more championships than the rest of the league combined, including the last 8
La Liga: real madrid and barcelona have combine for the last 15 championships but one
serie a: juventus won the last 8


I love the idea of relegation, and think it would spice up american sports (the idea of "tanking" goes away, and it gives more teams something to play for down the stretch), but the way it is implemented in europe is not without some major issues.

[cspan37421]

... but the way it is implemented in europe is not without some major issues.

I don't dispute that. My time in the UK, over 40 years ago, pre-dated the Premier League by some time. In my day there were Divisions I-IV. What happened to cause a concentration of power among a handful of Premier division teams, IDK. It would be interesting to see a budget distribution. Would it surprise anyone if these 6 paid far above the others, and thus are able to secure the most talent?

Perhaps the relegation purist's solution for that would be another tippy-top division just for the highest of spenders. But 6 is a pretty small number.

Ultimately, the more free the market for talent, the more difficult it is to achieve competitive balance or parity. And thus salary caps, minimum budgets, rookie scales and draft positions, etc., all work to keep things interesting among teams of wildly unequal resources.

[budwom]

the premier league is one of the better off ones, too. Most leagues only have a couple of teams who are competitive

Bundesliga: bayern with more championships than the rest of the league combined, including the last 8
La Liga: real madrid and barcelona have combine for the last 15 championships but one
serie a: juventus won the last 8


I love the idea of relegation, and think it would spice up american sports (the idea of "tanking" goes away, and it gives more teams something to play for down the stretch), but the way it is implemented in europe is not without some major issues.

We could set up The Conference of Shame to which laggards are relegated. Who knows how that might turn out? Maybe some schools would enjoy it, and actually win a game here and there...

[uh_no]

I don't dispute that. My time in the UK, over 40 years ago, pre-dated the Premier League by some time. In my day there were Divisions I-IV. What happened to cause a concentration of power among a handful of Premier division teams, IDK. It would be interesting to see a budget distribution. Would it surprise anyone if these 6 paid far above the others, and thus are able to secure the most talent?

Perhaps the relegation purist's solution for that would be another tippy-top division just for the highest of spenders. But 6 is a pretty small number.

Ultimately, the more free the market for talent, the more difficult it is to achieve competitive balance or parity. And thus salary caps, minimum budgets, rookie scales and draft positions, etc., all work to keep things interesting among teams of wildly unequal resources.

I'm sure if someone thought about it, they could come up with a good compromise. But there is no endemic reason why allowing a relatively large number of teams to compete financially, and punishing teams that refuse to invest/perform poorly/are poorly managed should necessarily be at odds.

Europe has tried to implement controls, but has largely failed, and the man city ruling last week is relatively strong evidence of this.

in my perfect world, there is pro/rel with cost controls at the top of the pyramid...so you can spend your way up to the top flight, but not dominate it. This is not so much of a problem in the lower teirs, IMO, as any teams that try to outspend will end up promoted through. Yeah they dominate one year, perhaps, but such is life. Or otherwise you need cost controls at each level, but they need to be graduated enough that a club seeking to move up isn't instantly relegated since their roster was built on the lower cap.



Anyway, point is, I think it CAN be done, but the powers that be would have to care about doing it...and they're never going to open up the leagues here, and they're never going to pay more than lip service to cost controls in europe.

[75Crazie]

I don't dispute that. My time in the UK, over 40 years ago, pre-dated the Premier League by some time. In my day there were Divisions I-IV. What happened to cause a concentration of power among a handful of Premier division teams, IDK. It would be interesting to see a budget distribution. Would it surprise anyone if these 6 paid far above the others, and thus are able to secure the most talent?

Team salaries in the European leagues are pretty inscrutable to me, but I seem to remember at the time (2016) that the Leicester team payroll was less than a quarter of the big Premier League teams (not counting Tottenham, which usually has the smallest payroll of the Big 6).

[-jk]

Ok, have to toss out my ACC hoops relegation plan again (posted in 2017): Split the ACC into two divisions, Upper (8) and Lower (7). Each team plays a double round robin within division (14 or 12 games) and 4 rotating single games across divisions, and maybe one extra game across divisions (call it the ESPN money-game rule for a temporarily down-and-out school - c.f., unc under Doherty). Given the current imbalance, the Lower teams get an out of conference chance to pad their resume. When we choose a 16th team, it'll rebalance.

This leads to killer SOS in the Upper division, and lots of great TV match-ups - and the chance for a strong Lower division team to really stand out. Just imagine a season of double round-robin games with Duke, unc, 'Cuse (ok, maybe not this year), Louisville and four other good teams. That's a bunch of the last dozen NCAA champs. ESPN's wet dream!

Here's where it gets really fun: At the end of the season, the top teams in the Upper division stay Upper and the bottom teams in Lower stay Lower. But the bottom two teams in Upper swap divisions with the top two teams in Lower. Premier League relegation awesomeness. (Watch those one-and-dones!)

The middle of the pack battles in both divisions would go down to the end of the season. No one near the top of Lower would coast down the stretch if they had a chance to move to Upper, and the middle of the Upper would fight dropping down. Almost every game would matter in the last couple weeks of regular season; it wouldn't just be a few key matchups. And ESPN gets to launch "Relegation Week!"

Tourney seeding could be worked out. Maybe just limit the ACC Tourney to the 8 Upper and top 4 Lower schools. Lord knows it couldn't be worse than the five days we have now!

-jk

[awhom111]

I don't dispute that. My time in the UK, over 40 years ago, pre-dated the Premier League by some time. In my day there were Divisions I-IV. What happened to cause a concentration of power among a handful of Premier division teams, IDK. It would be interesting to see a budget distribution. Would it surprise anyone if these 6 paid far above the others, and thus are able to secure the most talent?

Perhaps the relegation purist's solution for that would be another tippy-top division just for the highest of spenders. But 6 is a pretty small number.

Ultimately, the more free the market for talent, the more difficult it is to achieve competitive balance or parity. And thus salary caps, minimum budgets, rookie scales and draft positions, etc., all work to keep things interesting among teams of wildly unequal resources.

English soccer used to have a maximum salary, which was ended. In Europe, they basically had a version of the baseball reserve clause where a team held on to what today is the player's registration even after contracts had expired, but that was removed by court order. Once the Premier League was formed, someone eventually figured out that people actually wanted to watch games on television, but that meant that the top teams could market themselves to neutrals, including children whose parents had moved away from their birthplaces and local allegiances. The Champions League then allowed more than one team per country and had a more stable format, which once again allowed it to be more marketable to the populous and wealthy countries and then later overseas as well. As a result, English teams added more foreign ownership, including Americans who were used to the concept of sports being a profitable enterprise instead of rich locals using teams as community relations to take the heat off things they were doing in business. They were able to leverage their way to a bigger slice of the European pie and were very insightful about getting the English product out to the world outside of Europe.

[JasonEvans]

Ok, have to toss out my ACC hoops relegation plan again (posted in 2017): Split the ACC into two divisions, Upper (8) and Lower (7). Each team plays a double round robin within division (14 or 12 games) and 4 rotating single games across divisions, and maybe one extra game across divisions (call it the ESPN money-game rule for a temporarily down-and-out school - c.f., unc under Doherty). Given the current imbalance, the Lower teams get an out of conference chance to pad their resume. When we choose a 16th team, it'll rebalance.

This leads to killer SOS in the Upper division, and lots of great TV match-ups - and the chance for a strong Lower division team to really stand out. Just imagine a season of double round-robin games with Duke, unc, 'Cuse (ok, maybe not this year), Louisville and four other good teams. That's a bunch of the last dozen NCAA champs. ESPN's wet dream!

Here's where it gets really fun: At the end of the season, the top teams in the Upper division stay Upper and the bottom teams in Lower stay Lower. But the bottom two teams in Upper swap divisions with the top two teams in Lower. Premier League relegation awesomeness. (Watch those one-and-dones!)

The middle of the pack battles in both divisions would go down to the end of the season. No one near the top of Lower would coast down the stretch if they had a chance to move to Upper, and the middle of the Upper would fight dropping down. Almost every game would matter in the last couple weeks of regular season; it wouldn't just be a few key matchups. And ESPN gets to launch "Relegation Week!"

Tourney seeding could be worked out. Maybe just limit the ACC Tourney to the 8 Upper and top 4 Lower schools. Lord knows it couldn't be worse than the five days we have now!

-jk

Sorry, but why would teams fight so had to make it to the Upper division and why would the bottom Upper teams fight so hard to keep from being sent down? It would seem that if you are a middle-of-the-pack ACC team, it would be nice to win 10+ conference games by mostly playing bottom tier teams versus being in the Upper division and getting spanked by Duke, Louisville, Virginia, and other consistently high quality teams (whoever they might be).

-Jason "you would need to set up some pretty serious seeding advantages or something even more than that to make the Upper division more palatable" Evans