Relegation and Promotion?

If you are vaguely aware of professional soccer in Europe, you know that they have various levels to their leagues.

I'll use England as an example because when I link to a page over there, you won't need to got to the translator.

The top four levels of professional soccer in England are:

Premier League
The Championship
League One
League Two

After a season is completed, a few of the bottom teams in each league are relegated (or demoted) to a lower league. The top teams in each league - except for the Premier League - are moved up to the next highest league.

Why would I bring this up here?

Big League Stew had a post yesterday that dealt with the idea of...well, I'll let him tell you.

There have been scores of realignment plans floated ever since Bud Selig and his committee decided they might want to solve a problem that doesn't really exist outside the world of Orioles fans.

The soccer-based concept of relegation has been mentioned a few times and Evan Weiner of The Daily Caller has the latest proposal. In Weiner's imagination, eight teams would inhabit both the American and National leagues while the remaining 14 would compete for promotion in a two-division "Continental League." Two spots in each league would be up for grabs each year with the bottom two teams in the AL and NL sent packing for the shame of the Continental League.

There's no doubt that it's a fun system to talk about, but I'm not in favor of actually adopting it. In fact, I think bringing it over from England (and other points beyond) would be much closer to the failed American run of "Coupling" than the wild success of "The Office."

He lists five reasons why the system wouldn't work for MLB. And all are good. But, this one was my favorite:

4. Parity? What parity? As 35th Street Review points out, only four different teams have won English Premier League championships since 1992 and one of those titles was a one-year surprise appearance from Blackburn. Over the same time span, 10 different franchises recorded the best record in baseball and 11 won the World Series. Relegation might increase the competition in the middle of the pack, but ask an Orioles fan if he's more bothered by the fact his team hasn't finished third since 2004 or hasn't made the playoffs since 1997. Promotion wouldn't rank as a big thrill.

Click through to read it all, if only to see his reason #2.