If this happened, the NFL would be hurting - not thriving. Think about it. How many teams in the last ten years have gone from worst in their division to winning it, in a single year? A lot. I didn't start following the NFL until a year or two ago, so I'm not sure on the numbers, but the Lions are a surefire example. Those teams would need to prove themselves a year before being moved up, instead of having their deserved shot right away. Drafting would be different. Everything would be different. The way the NFL and every other American sport attempts to introduce parity is through allowing better draft picks to worse teams. If a team were relegated, they wouldn't recover because they would never be able to draft good players. The first round pick is not going to agree to go to a B-league team.

This is brought up every three months or so by someone who thinks it's an amazing idea that they just thought of and no one else had ever realized before. I know this because I did the same thing, on this very board. I have realized since then how bad of an idea it is, because the infrastructure would have to be completely overhauled. It might - MIGHT - work in baseball (even less likely for hockey), because you already have minor leagues, but probably still would not. Football is out of the question.

Back to the draft subject, it might work for baseball or hockey because they would "lend" the top prospects that aren't quite ready for the bigs. Then, maybe a lower league team would be able to climb back. But the lack of drafting themselves still hurts tremendously. Not to mention how much this kills college hockey because teams have ANOTHER outlet for their prospects.

Sidenote: my fantasy hockey league does this. We have 3 leagues of about 16 teams that promote/relegate after the end of the season. We are in our first year, so I don't know how many people will stick around long-term, but it's a pretty good idea. In real life, though, no.

Or Michigan before Purdue.

I agree completely. There are so many points against it.

Yes, Wigan is a great example of the Little Club that Could, but while their rise to the EPL was great for people to watch, they've essentially peaked. Even if Whelan were to sell the club to someone with very deep pockets, he'd have no way to get the Latics up to a top-tier side, especially not once the financial management rules kick in. The DW is far too small, and as you point out, they can't exactly justify expanding it unless they know they can stay up for years, and they can't be sure they'll stay up without more revenue, which basically means expanding the stadium, which they still wouldn't fill without more talent ...

And the thing is that in the vast majority of cases, an MLB team doesn't build its own stadium: it has the city and/or state build one. That's difficult enough these days when you know there will be an MLB team to fill it, as best as you can tell. Imagine trying to get a city to pay for upgrades when you can't even be sure the upgrades will be complete before the team is relegated. Imagine telling fans in Columbus or Buffalo or Indianapolis or Sacramento or New Orleans that they need to pay for improvements to their AAA stadium on top of the other stadiums they've built ... there isn't a single AAA or AA team that drew 10,000 fans this season, and even the A's drew nearly double that. A number of these parks are probably in places where you couldn't do much expansion (if any) even if you wanted to and if the city could afford it. Without that expansion, those little teams will be renting an MLB spot.

EPL works like that right now: nearly half of newly-promoted teams (23 of 53) were relegated in the season immediately following their promotion. For every Fulham (11 consecutive seasons in the top flight), there's a Crystal Palace (three promotions, three immediate relegations).

Sure, in an ideal world, promotion and relegation would boost clubs that are playing in leagues below their ability and sink clubs whose owners have no intention of competing, but the way it tends to work is that big-money clubs stay at the top and small-money clubs either throw money out the window to stay up or absorb a season's worth of beatings and sink down. (And imagine the impact it would have on overall attendance and TV ratings. The A's draw 30,000 per game on the road; if they're playing in Indianapolis, they aren't going to draw a third of that, and the ratings aren't going to be good. What happens to advertising if, say, the Mets or Cubs get relegated?)

MAC / Big 10 - Pac 12 / MWC (and so on) relegation is the way to go... ACC / Big East and SEC & Big 12 / Conf USA to round it out...  Only questions are how to get to 4 Biggies and 4 Buddies.

I'm not a fan of the article but I don't understand the beef with RR.  His salary isn't mentioned once and frankly, money isn't much of a comfort when you feel like you failed or weren't given enough time to succeed (which is his perception regardless of whether M fans think he was given enough time).  

His "chirping" is, "of course they're good - they've got a lot of great players that needed coached up."  He's rooting for them even though he's not part of it and he sure as heck isn't undercutting Hoke.  Is there something you saw that I missed?

Take issue with Dennis Dodd for having a poorly written article that didn't flow well and felt like it was cut-and-pasted but I don't understand why the need to act like RR is some whiny punk.