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In short: relegation is the stick to the carrot of promotion between hierarchical leagues. In the English Premier League, you've got 20 spots in the lifeboat. Three of those seats are ejector seats and will be reserved for the three teams caught at the bottom each year. Those three teams will be replaced by three others fit enough to climb into the boat and try their luck in one of the world's most profitable game of musical chairs, and thus reap the carrot end of the bargain: EPL revenues.

This is determined mostly -- but not solely -- by the team's performance on the field. EPL fans will now bore the living daylights out of you by explaining the arcana of soccer politics to you, but the general thrust is this: the system does a lot to protect the big four and little to ensure the upward mobility of teams like the lowly Blackpools and Wolverhamptons of the world. Then you, as an American, can giggle at an Englishman being shocked at a system favoring a hereditary aristocracy and rev off in a donked-up pickup truck while blasting "Proud To Be An American."

If you happen to be a college football fan, you cannot do this too hard, though. This phenomenon already reigns in our fair sport, a tilted playing field of 20 or so aristocrats passing national titles and conference titles around. The last true surprise in the national championship picture came in 1990 when Georgia Tech and Colorado split a title. Since then, the national title and subsequent BCS titles have been shared between 14 teams, and none of them a surprise in the least in terms of money spent on football, talent available or national name recognition.

The advent of the BCS only worsened this trend. Instead of giving the voters some freelancing room -- i.e., the same kind of randomness that could give BYU its 1984 title -- the BCS's matchups made voting a Boise State into the title even less likely due to the narrative weight imposed by a one versus two matchup. Never mind that getting to that one and two was guesswork at best made by voters: make fake math, and you'll sell real results, something the BCS did well.

The primary beneficiary has been the SEC, winners of the past six national titles, confirmation that as in any sport, you can buy titles with money. If you don't like the lack of parity in college football, your options are to eliminate competitive advantages, or to embrace the hierarchy and take advantage of the bloody heights.

We're not here to change the world. We are here to make it more awesome, though.

Relegation already happens in college football, it's just done in a stupid, messy and disorganized fashion. The process of relegation in college football is what you now know as "conference realignment," a shadowy process managed by boring men in blazers eyeballing spreadsheets of television homes in closed board rooms.

In order to bump up to a better league, you have to win and present a nice business opportunity for the league in question, and then after that you're in for life no matter how badly it goes. (You're welcome, Duke and Vanderbilt.)

LIke the NFL's quiet socialism, that kind of permanent membership is simply un-American. If we're going to have the kind of oligarchy we already have in college football, let's at least build in our own Hunger Games scenario at the bottom to give the illusion of hope for the homeless New Mexico States of the world. (Or more appropriately Idaho, who literally may have been left to relegation to FCS in the collapse and cannibalization of the WAC.)

Please consider the live possibility of App State fighting its way into the system on the field, and of teams like New Mexico being put out of their misery. Does Jeremy Foley, Florida's AD, really enjoy playing three Coastal Carolina games a year? Fine, he can do that if Florida gets relegated down to the Big South.

The rich still get richer under relegation. No one here wants to stand in the way of that. What relegation would allow, however, is the possibility that underperforming teams not living up to the aristocratic standard would be booted off into the mob to prove their worth anew, and perhaps lose their seat permanently to a hungrier, scrappier underling determined to bend the system and its rules to their advantage. If that and possibly screwing someone else out of a spot in the penthouse at the same time isn't the American dream, we don't know what is.

SuperHornet wrote:This has been discussed here before, I believe. In theory, it at least SOUNDS like a good idea. But it starts running into problems as soon as one tries to do it.

How do you go about doing it? For example, take a school like Wazzu. They're technically BCS, so when they come in dead last in the Pac-12, do you drop them to FBS (non-BCS) or straight to FCS? And if you do that, who comes up? Relegation implies someone coming up at the same time. If you do it based on record, then you're going to get Delaware or App replacing Wazzu, and Wazzu goes to the CAA. Either that, or a team back East gets screwed because you bring up Davis. (These are just examples pulled out of thin air, mind you.)

This screws with conference integrity. (Yeah, I know that loyalty being what it is, that went out the window a long time ago.) But will the Pac-12 REALLY accept swapping teams with, say, the Big Sky or the CAA? Will a CAA team REALLY want to be "promoted" to the Sun Belt? To me, that's not exactly a promotion.

There are too many problems here, Jelly. NEVER going to happen. A 64-team playoff will happen before this does.

Mvemjsunpx wrote: This is a great idea for a video game, but it wouldn't work out in real life at all.

bluehenbillk wrote:I think the FCS playoffs needs this model for autobids. If leagues can't win games over the course of a number of leagues, no autobid for you.

AZGrizFan wrote:

bluehenbillk wrote:I think the FCS playoffs needs this model for autobids. If leagues can't win games over the course of a number of leagues, no autobid for you.

THAT'S where this needs to be tweaked and applied.

Loss of autobid status for failure to perform in playoffs.