Spring as a sports fan in Kansas City has had more rain than sunshine this year.
Kansas City Royals fans know heartbreak. The team’s record earned them a spot at the bottom of their division. As the Boys in Blue look for a new contract at the stadium, they have failed to compete, losing three games in a row eight times while yet to win three games in a row. This essentially gives no chance of making the playoffs. And it’s still May.
Meanwhile, Sporting Kansas City – despite an alarming inability to score goals and win games – remains in contention for a playoff spot. The football club sit near the bottom of their division, mirroring the Royals from across the metro.
The basement is a quiet place for fans of American sports. The games seem to have low stakes or even no stakes. As a fan, my excitement for the opener turns to wondering if we could compete next season, and as long as this season isn’t even halfway through.
The mood is particularly bleak in Major League Baseball, which has 162 games. Will the Royals lose 100 games? 105? 110? Those morbid landmarks are the only dramatic tension in the last season.
However, fans of foreign sports leagues will tell you this: the lowest positions in the standings can be the teams that attract the most support.
Half a world away this weekend, some of the worst teams in sports will compete for a title that is, in some ways, more valuable than a championship. They will fight to avoid relegation.
Consider Everton, a soccer club in Liverpool, England. The historic team has competed for decades at the highest level of one of the most prestigious — if not the most prestigious — soccer leagues in the world. However, they must win this weekend to avoid the possibility of being relegated to the next level of the competition.
If sent down, they are relegated to the Championship, a relegation that would reduce their incomes, turn away top players and draw jeers from rival fans for years.
After 37 games, one Premier League final will decide their fate.
Consequently, Everton fans will be manic, watching every ball fly, screaming for a goal and finally waiting for the official whistle to end the game in either agony or ecstasy. These are the stakes of an unsuccessful team that is close to relegation.
Conversely, it’s almost statistically impossible for the Royals’ final game to mean anything this year—unless they’re playing a playoff contending team.
The decades-long tradition of relegation offers a tempting possibility for our national sports leagues. Can the prospect of relegation motivate teams like our current floundering ones in Kansas City? Right now, many underachieving teams are actually flopping their seasons, hoping to land the top pick in the last-place draft.
The decades-long tradition of relegation offers a tempting possibility for our national sports leagues. Can the prospect of relegation motivate teams like our current floundering ones in Kansas City? Right now, many underachieving teams are actually flopping their seasons, hoping to land the top pick in the last-place draft.
A few years ago I was talking to a staff member from one of the local sports teams. I asked him, “Do you think American sports teams would be more competitive if we had . . .”
That’s as far as I got into a sentence before he said, “There’s no way we’re ever going to get out.”
The reason he gave? Owners of American sports teams guarantee that they will always have a team in the particular division in which they purchased the team. American sports teams are stable assets: buy an NFL team and you’ll have an NFL team forever. There is no risk of catastrophic asset failure in our leagues.
Of course, I don’t have a team, so I can be a big relegation fan. I don’t have to worry about the financial collapse that can cause the club to be relegated.
Still, I wonder if the high-stakes competition created by relegation-threatened leagues would be more profitable than leagues of complacent bottom-dwelling teams strolling toward their final games. Of course, there is money generated by the enthusiasm of the fans around the team’s fight to stay in the top flight. So many more cards. So many more concession beers. So many more eyes watching the televised finals, including commercials.
The relegation model is familiar to our American children who play football, basketball and other sports in America. The best teams move up to the next league – sometimes even jumping to the next age group to find challenging competition. Struggling teams go down. It’s an act of mercy in a way, preventing teams that are routinely busted from dreading their next season. If our children can handle the degradation, our professionals should be able to handle it.
Why not add relegation and promotion to high school sports? Perhaps the top teams in the KSHSAA enrollment classification could move up and compete with the bigger schools. In many cases, the competition would be fairer and more exciting (I’m looking at you, Bishop Miega).
The NBA has been the most adventurous league in reforming its playoff structure. Mid-major teams in the NBA play individual games before they are even eligible to play in a playoff series. Why should a team with a losing record be given essentially the same odds in the playoffs as a team that wins 80 percent of its games?
That reform is certainly less drastic than the possibility of adding relegations. However, one of those teams that barely made the playoffs this year, the Miami Heat, will compete in the NBA Finals with just one more win in their series with the Celtics.
To see relegation bring ferocity to the end of a team’s dismal season, tune in to any of these games. Everything will be at 11:30 a.m. Central:
- Everton v Bournemouth
- Leeds v Tottenham
- Leicester City vs West Ham United
As you watch, consider whether that’s the end-of-the-year fan experience you want – a raucous crowd cheering until the final whistle of a terrible season. Or would you rather have an empty Kauffman Stadium? Smug Children’s Mercy Park?
Would you be willing to trade the quiet season of last place for the crazy excitement of a season on the brink of relegation? I’m.
Eric Thomas directs the Kansas Scholastic Press Association and teaches visual journalism and photojournalism at the University of Kansas. Through its opinion section, the Kansas Reflector works to amplify the voices of people who are affected by public policies or excluded from the public debate. Find information, including how to submit your comment, here.
