Relegation
Pittsburgh Pirates. Kansas City Royal. Cleveland Browns. Detroit Lions. (gulp) New York Knicks. In all the major American sports, cheap owners, poor personnel decisions and general ineptitude has lead to a handful of perennial losers with virtually no motivation to improve due to monopolies of the major sports leagues. Relegation is perhaps the greatest gift soccer could give to other American sports, but also the most unlikely due to finances.
I do wonder what all these promotion/relegation folks are going to say when the European Super League gets formed without it.
4 comments:
I'd only add that including the Browns is ludicrous and ignorant.
Randy Lerner is currently paying three coaches, has just hired a ridiculously expensive team President in Mike Holmgren and, basically, spends money like Niagara Falls spends water. Calling them "cheap" is absurd.
He's also done what everyone swears owners ought to do, ie. hire the best people he can find, pay them very well and then let them do their jobs without interference from the ownership.
The fact that this hasn't produced results sure isn't Lerners' fault.
Oh, and then there's the fact that there IS no minor football league.
Yeah, I noticed that but I decided to let it go. It was Christmas Eve, after all.
Although I suppose the author would argue that the Browns are good examples of poor personnel decisions and general ineptitude than cheap owners.
The Browns are only ludicrous because they've actually been winning games recently; up until the last three weeks, they were the most pitiful iteration of a football team I've ever seen, and I've been watching them my whole life.
Personally, however, I think that restructuring the NFL into three divisions, with 9 home/away games against everyone (and the dissolution of the two teams with the least fan support) would HELP the Browns a lot. We get pummeled by the Steelers, Ravens, and Bengals twice a year, but we could probably be competitive against the worst teams and then build on that. The games are too hard for any stability to develop.
Also, it'd be interesting to see how well the "best teams" perform when they only have to play other elite teams all the time. Even during Cleveland's 10-6 season, they only managed to beat one team with a winning record: Seattle, who in turn beat NOBODY with a winning record. In the NFL's current structure, some teams (i.e., New Orleans) play such weakened schedules that it's hard to take them seriously.
Oh, and I agree with Anonymous: Lerner's not the problem in Cleveland. We loved how he was a hands-off owner when we went 10-6; we can't hate it now that we're losing. If I were Lerner, I'd care way more about Villa than the Browns; they actually show him a return on his investment on the field, with a lot less hassle.
Post a Comment