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Two Tier League?

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  • OK, blah blah blah, but the talk of the World Cup got me to thinking how the NFL could be set up to mimic the English Premiere league. While I am really not certain exactly how they are set up, I do know that they are sort of a Two Tier League. Compare it almost to our AAA league in baseball.

    I also know that the worst couple of teams in their "Tier One", get "relegated" to Tier Two, and that the top teams in Tier Two get "promoted" to "Tier One"

    Here is how it could work in the NFL:

    Take your current 32 NFL teams:

    Patriots, Jets, Bills, Dolphins

    Ravens, Steelers, Bengals, Browns

    Broncos, Chargers, Raiders, Chiefs

    Colts, Texans, Jaguars, Titans

    Giants, Eagles, Redskins, Cowboys

    Saints, Falcons, Buccaneers, Panthers

    Bears, Lions, Packers, Vikings

    Rams, Cardinals, Seahawks, 49ers

    Then, form your Tier Two league. Your AAA minor league if you will of perhaps a dozen teams. Locate teams say, in the following cities:

    Los Angeles

    Portland

    Sacramento

    Salt Lake

    San Antonio

    Birmingham

    Memphis

    Louisville

    Oklahoma City

    Norfolk/Va. Beach (Tidewater)

    Raleigh

    El Paso

    So, initially, you supply these minor league teams with players that are undrafted, free agents etc. and let them operate as a league for 2-3 years.

    THEN, in the 3rd/4th year of operation you say: OK, those two teams with the worst record amongst the Tier One League, will now be replaced by the two teams that play in the championship game of the Tier Two League.

    For instance, this past season, the Houston Texans and the Washington Redskins would have been "relegated" to the Tier Two League, and just as an example, the San Antonio and Tidewater teams who were the best in Teir Two get to now play in "The NFL".....and would take their place in their respective division.

    The teams that were relegated in one season would have their opportunity to make it back into the NFL by being one of the top two teams in Teir Two the following season. (and, obviously their method of staying out of Tier Two is to not be lousy again.)

    How would the draft work? I guess you would have to give say, the Texans and the Redskins picks and assign them to the San Antonio and Tidewater team that took their place.

    The tier two teams could obviously sign UDFAs or older veterans to play in that tiers teams. (Vince Young would have a job).

    Tier two players could be acquired by Tier One teams if they thought they could help.

    In my opinion there are plenty enough players that can play football to staff the rosters of another dozen teams. While their salaries would be comparatively low, they would be a lot more than a guy bagging groceries or selling insurance.

    So, it is an idea to not really "expand" the NFL, but to get a AAA type pro team into cities that could support it. I mean, it is better than Arena League or the like. The NFL would have to financially support these teams to a certain extent.

  • Nope. I wouldn't agree with any system that sent team up and down. However I think an American based development league set up by the NFL would be a good thing and it is something that will likely happen here within the next dacade considering all the things that are more than likely going to be changed with the NCAA. Maybe a system where you set up 1 - 2 minor league teams per division that those teams would get exclusive signing rights to. Each year each division does their own draft from their select minor league teams to bring talent up for training camp and teams have the ability to sign any player from rheir minor league teams during the preseason and regular season based off the waiver wire system.

    Ruining threads since 1897.

  • I love how the Premier League (English Football) is set up with the bottom 3 teams getting relegated.

    But to my knowledge each team has it's own "minor" league development teams. They sign players as young as 12. They go to school and play soccer all year around, for whatever team they are tied too, and once they are good enough they get to play for the "Big" club. Even at 17 or 18 years old. They don't have the stupid/corrupt NCAA to deal with

    Plus English Football "buys and sells" players. There really isn't "free" agency like USA pro sports have. They actually "transfer" players in mid-season. And they "loan" players too. It's a weird set-up compared to the NFL

    "And they don't really know even what they're talkin' about And I can't imagine what empty heads can achieve."

  • I wouldn't intend this to be an exact mimic of the way British soccer does business. It is simply a way to get real pro football into additional, deserving towns. The Arena League may be interesting, but it ain't real football. The XFL, USFL, UFL were attempts that failed because they were not set up to coordinate with the NFL.

    These Tier Two teams could play on like Wednesday night and get some decent TV ratings.

    Yes, it would be a minor league....but with the hopes that one day a team could actually become a big league city's team.

  • The present NFL owners would never go for it. The two teams dropped would lose money big time in sponsorships/network money. Not sure how the draft would work out for those teams. It would also seem to me the the 2 teams dropped to the 2nd tier would make it back the following year just about everytime. Interesting but not going to happen.

  • Development league=great idea

    relegated teams= too many headaches

    Every team, regardless of which tier would have to get equal draft opportunities, and the league wouldnt be happy with, given your example, JJ Watt and RGIII playing the minors next year.

  • I think relegation is the only way to make a developmental league worth watching. Unfortunately, as buckeye mentioned, it would have a significant effect on the draft. Because I don't think you could do a draft fairly in this manner, it would result in an elimination of both the draft and the salary cap. I don't care to see either of those things happen.

  • It might be perfect if more openly gay players are drafted.

    :neutral_face:

  • I'll do a bit of a write up tomorrow on what I think would work but you can see my brief example above. The reason the minor league teams for baseball are profitable is because people are interested in watching their teams prospects grow. The nfl could do this in a similar fashion. The reason NFL Europe failed is because it was used to try and get those in Europe excited about football but footballs fan base is here in America so attendance was poor. You bring that system over here to America and have them play in the springtime. Boom success.

    Ruining threads since 1897.

  • If they had a 8 week minor league, where every team was represented (giving far more players a shot, and a job) you bet your ass it would sell. Also, it would be huge for developmental QBs among other things. Any player on their rookie contract, or practice squad players could play. To do this they'd probably have to move the draft to March. Who wouldnt love that?

  • Baseball would be pissed

  • I highly doubt the NFL will be creating a developmental league any time soon. They already have a free one in the NCAA and considering the potential of all of these concussion lawsuits, I'm not seeing much of a financial gain for the NFL.

    Now the NBA on the other hand.....

  • People would watch their teams on tv nonstop. More people would probably go to that than baseball games. You wouldnt be paying em shit. You dont think Bengal fans would tune in to get a peak at McCarron? I think its an untapped resource they should definitely explore. There wont be any more concussion lawsuits. You wouldnt want to get a peak at Shaw, Crowell, West? Perhaps Manziel towards the end of the season? It would speed up development.

  • Flyin JF Flyin J

    People would watch their teams on tv nonstop. More people would probably go to that than baseball games. You wouldnt be paying em shit. You dont think Bengal fans would tune in to get a peak at McCarron? I think its an untapped resource they should definitely explore. There wont be any more concussion lawsuits. You wouldnt want to get a peak at Shaw, Crowell, West? Perhaps Manziel towards the end of the season? It would speed up development.

    XxDaBuckeyexX said:

    People would watch their teams on tv nonstop. More people would probably go to that than baseball games. You wouldnt be paying em shit. You dont think Bengal fans would tune in to get a peak at McCarron? I think its an untapped resource they should definitely explore. There wont be any more concussion lawsuits.

    So they're going to create a new league as well as pay them less and not get anymore concussion lawsuits?

    It sounds ideal in theory but life is far from ideal.

  • Waivers are a magical thing. Everyone knows what they risk when they play. People line up in drones to play for 30,000 in the arena league.

  • Considering scientist are still learning about the long term effects of concussions, I highly doubt the average NFL prospect can truly know the risk. The NFL however has a better idea and I just can't see them opening up another, more volatile avenue to a potentially existential threat to the league in general. They haven't instituted all of these new safety penalties and procedures over the past couple for PR's sake.

    Granted it's merely my personal opinion.

  • As for the 2 tier league I think it might spread the talent a little too thin across all of the teams. Also, how pissed are Arian Foster and Andre Johnson gonna be now that they're in the lower tier league?

    Ja.brill Peppers - Cleveland Brown OldBrownsFan, on 02 Jun 2017 - 5:09PM said: "No you are not the work of the devil but you are deceived by the devil." Who's got it better than us? Nooooobody!

  • One of the things I love about american sports is the parity - how a team can go from worst to first every year. If you have relegated teams, you'd end up with EITHER:

    1) houston's replacement in the top tier gets the top pick; OR

    2) the bottom team in the bottom tier gets the top pick.

    in the first scenario, you are ensuring that all the top talent stays in the top division, making it impossible for the teams in the bottom tier to do anything more than come up and then go down again, unless they strike it Andrew Lucky on an absolutely elite, can't miss QB when they come up.

    In the second scenario, you are essentially ensuring that the top tier of rookies don't get to play in the top tier of the sport for the first few years (since their team is so crappy they'll never get promoted).

    I like the idea of each team, or each division at least, having a developmental team. Perhaps there could be an AFC north division team, with a GM separate to the four teams, that just tries to play 'AFC north style' football. The idea of seeing a league where we get to check up on Shaw, Crowell, Slaughter, Faulk, and scout their pro-development? I love that. But relegation and promotion are terrible things to inflict on the NFL.

    The BIG difference between american sports and soccer (rugby, cricket and who knows what other sports), is the draft. In soccer, young players, as mentioned above, are signed to a team anywhere from about 8 years old and upwards. They might move around once or twice before making it to a team where they can play in the first team, or they may never make it. Then, players rights are bought and sold - it's quite possible for a player to change club every year or two. most importantly, the highest bidder (usually) wins. So if you have more money, you can buy more, better players. And then the teams that do the best get more prize money and merchandising. On top of that, you have other countries' leagues, so a player is perfectly free to move from England to France or Spain (or China, Peru, Azerbaijan or Timbuktu). It's a flawed system that's a bit out of date, but it's one we're stuck with.

    The one thing I would be interested to see is 'loan' deals. In soccer, bigger clubs (usually) loan their younger, developmental guys to smaller teams for a year, to help their development. Think about a team now that is stacked at WR, we take a guy for a season, probably a younger guy that they like but don't want to trade, pay his wages for a year, play him while Gordon's suspended, and then send him back. We get a player filling in for a year, they get a player with a year's development. Someone mentioned Green Bay having a lot of receivers? Or, we have a bunch of OLs like Faulk, Gilkey, Fragel etc that could use time somewhere else. A team's starter goes down for a month, they take our guy for a month to cover the hole, our guy gets development time.

  • Well, right now what do we have here in the US in terms of a "developmental league"? Yes, there is college ball....but I am thinking in terms of post college development. Look at all the players that don't make a roster that still could have talent that could be developed.

    There is the Arena League, and Canada I guess.

    The UFL went belly up in 2012.

    But there is supposed to be in the works a "New USFL", which IS supposed to try to be a "developmental league"

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_United_States_Football_League

    I note that Akron could actually become one of the USFL cities:

    By May 10, 2012, the Cuadra-led league was trumpeting Portland (OR), Salt Lake City (UT), San Antonio (TX) or Austin (TX), Columbus (OH) or Akron (OH), Oklahoma City (OK), Omaha (NE), Raleigh/Durham (NC), Birmingham (AL) and Memphis (TN) as team sites.[10]

  • A developmental league I'd be all in favour of, for sure. Whether it'd be one development team per NFL team, or perhaps separate teams whose players are all automatically entered in to the supplemental draft?

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