THE LAST WORD
RELEGATION RUMINATIONS By Dustin Jayroe
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s the 2022 NBA Draft unfolded last month, two things were top of mind for me: When and where would Arkansas native and Hog hooper Jaylin Williams go, and why professional sports in America are treading water. For the latter, that’s probably not what you think it means. There are a lot of hot-button issues surrounding the sports world today, and this isn’t really about any of those. No, no. I’d rather talk about relegation. Relegation is basically when, at the end of a season, a select number of teams that are at the bottom of the final standings get demoted down a division. It’s accompanied by promotion, where then the same number of teams at the top of the standings in that division move upward. It’s a parity-producing system used by most professional soccer leagues throughout the world. In England, the most notable promotion/relegation concerns the Premier League, the top dog, and the Championship, the next flight down. A quasi-comp in American sports might be the NBA and the G League. Except for the fact that there’s no pro/rel between those two. That’s why we’re here. It just seems like we could be doing more to encourage full-season entertainment in American sports — at the top and the bottom of the standings. Every year, the draft — be it the NBA, NFL, or otherwise — begins with the season’s worst teams being given the first selections and, theoretically the best incoming talents. That system rewards poor performance. So much so, that it’s become a fairly common and effective strategy for teams to “tank,” or lose games on purpose, late in the season for an early-round draft pick. Shouldn’t we relegate them instead? And then, perhaps, reward the newly promoted teams from the lesser division with the first picks? If this already sounds like a preferred system to you, it gets even better. Coming into the home stretch of this past Premier League season, a tense horse race was unfolding on both sides of the table. Two teams — Liverpool and Manchester City — were
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neck and neck to win the league. Each won four of their last five games, but Manchester City inched out the title by one point. At the other end, two teams were already decidedly relegated, but another three (or four) more were dangerously close to that third and final relegation spot. There was no tanking for these teams. Each was at risk of being demoted for an entire season, which would mean they’d have to claw their way back to promotion. In the end, Burnley was the one to fill that last relegation spot, with Leeds United and Everton barely safe above them by three and four points, respectively.
Promoted from the Championship for their performances were Fulham, Bournemouth and Nottingham Forest. It’s a pretty basic fundamental of life, really: Reward and encourage those who do good; punish and discourage those who do bad. With promotion and relegation, more games matter. That makes things more interesting all year, but especially at the end of the season. Advantage soccer. Play on. Dustin Jayroe is the former editor of AY About You and the Arkansas Mental Health Guide. The Arkansas native is an expert on all things soccer and Batman, and is now a regular contributor to all of AY Media Group’s properties.
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