Isn't there some soccer league where teams can lose their places and be sent to a lower league?

That would be all of them in every country except the USA.

What's a UFL?

I've long said me and ten of my friends could win the NFC West. And yes, we would be playing both ways.

Waste of time, most people here hate sports or dont care for them. Theres no way it can be demoted to anything other than what they are right now, which is a sad sack of shit of a team.

I have been going to games since 2005, season ticket holder for 2 years now. My biggest gripe is how the NFL finds 2$ plastic megaphones to be in the same catagory with weapons, alcohol, or rockets (IE: banned from the stadium). Got a cowbell? Cant enter the stadium with it. Snuck it in? Heres a "deremit" on your account. Violate it two more times, and you're banned from buying tickets.

When you have a losing team (still an improvement from the past two seasons) at least offer some flexiblity for the fans to bring in noismakers.

Despite this year's NFC West shitshow, parity in the NFL is better than any of the other major American sports leagues. You really never know what's going to happen. Who would've thought Arizona would end up in the Super Bowl two years ago? Remember when the Saints were mired in perpetual mediocrity?

And have you watched a UFL game? The talent gap between the UFL and NFL is huge. JP Losman was a championship quarterback in the inaugural UFL season. The only reason he cracked an NFL roster this year is because Hasselbeck can't play for more than a quarter without hurting himself, and Zac Robinson got snapped up by Detroit.

If the parity wasn't there, then sure, I'd be down. Imagine if there was a lower, second division for Major League Baseball? That'd be great, because then teams like the Royals, Orioles and Mariners might actually have a shot at winning something.

Well, the 'Hawks are having a better year than my Broncos, so I think y'all should just STFU and be happy with what you've got.

Of course, I grew up in New England, so at least I've still got one team to root for.

Go Pats!

If the NFL had relegation, a league that size, 32 teams, would probably only relegate four or five teams a year tops. So Carolina, Denver, Cincy, Buffalo, and probably Arizona would be in trouble, not the Seahawks. We're only the eleventh-worst team, assuming that the won-lost tiebreaker would be point difference, as it should be.

But the UFL as it is currently constructed isn't an adequate second division; it only has five teams (six next year). You can't really have an entire league get promoted every year; that doesn't make sense. What would make more sense is to permanently shift some teams, say, eight, from the NFL to the UFL, leaving 24 (a good number for scheduling), and then adding another six to ten new teams, for a 20-24 team league.

There's a problem with the stadiums, of course; promoted teams would have to upgrade theirs to NFL standards, which might be difficult; for instance, the Virginia team next year will play in a 6,000 seat arena, which isn't going to cut it in the NFL, and a few of the other clubs play in 20,000+ seaters. In contrast, the smallest current NFL stadium is Soldier Field, holding 61,500. Problem.

So maybe two leagues of 20, or even two of 18. But to really make relegation work, it has to continue all the way down the pyramid; in the English FA, for instance, has about 7,000 teams organized in more than 480 divisions, and every single one of them (down to the tenth or eleventh level) is not only eligible to be promoted upward all the way to the Premier League but to compete for the FA Cup.

Who would be the feeder league for the UFL? The obvious answer is "the colleges", which in a just world would sever their make-believe associations with their universities and become the professional teams de jure that they already are de facto. But that's another discussion.

Think 05-06. The Steelers. They came outta nowhere late in the season and took down the Indy, Denver and finally the team in question.

We're the Steelers! We will win SB title!

@3, you can't bring noisemakers into Seahawks games? You sure as hell can at Sounders games in the same stadium. I bring my enormous rattle to every game, which I'm sure can be heard behind the other goal (it's seriously louder than fuck). There's another gang of rattle-wielders down by the southeast corner flag, and there are cowbells and vuvuzelas around the stadium. To say nothing of the GIANT DRUMS that are being pounded throughout the game.

I'm sure the Hawks crowds are louder, what with nearly twice the throats, and those upper decks are really designed to rain down the noise. But we make a pretty good racket.

The first time I used my rattle some yuppie prong a couple rows behind us started screaming at me to "act my age" and "I'm on the phone, god damn it". He was on his fucking phone the entire game, talking to his Very Important Buddy, the bleeding ass flap. He hasn't been back, and everyone else in our section likes it, or claims to.

Isn't "act your age" really just shorthand for "be a big douch, just like me"?

And my guess is the noisemaker ban probably stems from those past decades in the Kingdome when the fan noise was so loud opposing QB's literally could not call audibles and expect to be heard by anyone on their line other than the center.

@9, what really hurt was when he said "you're almost sixty". My shirt number is 58, the year of my birth, not my age. On the upside, I get to be me, while he is forever stuck being him. So I win that one.

3 of the 4 NFC West teams have been to the Super Bowl during the last decade. St. Louis has a franchise QB in place, San Francisco is a real football coach away from being a very good team. Arizona is in rebuild mode, but is two years and 15 seconds off of nearly winning a Super Bowl. Seattle, despite the terrible play, is so much better than they have been the previous two seasons it's ridiculous that anyone should be complaining about them.

All the NFC East has is their bloated sense of purpose and importance to the rest of the league. Washington is a joke franchise, Dallas hasn't been relevant for 15 years, and the Giants can't figure out if they are the best team in the NFL or if they're playing basketball. At least the Eagles have athleticism on offense that is unrivaled and probably capable of beating anyone on any given week, but they also have Andy Reid who has a large track record of letting his sons run the team during big games.

Prediction = the 7-9 NFC West winner wins a playoff game. Hopefully vs. your Eagles Goldy.

The NFC West quarterbacks may suck. But none of them are dog killers.

Relegation would be a pretty stupid idea in a league where it's not uncommon to go from horrible to very good from one year to the next (see 08 to 09 Dolphins, among others).

And noisemakers suck. You should have the good sense to leave those at home yourself. Here's a little secret: in the US, noisemakers are only popular in cities that have less than ideal fanbases. In other words, they are a crutch for fans who don't know how to actually root for their teams properly.

Thank you @11.

1958? God, you're a youngster.

American sports will never do relegation because A) nowhere to go to and B) the owners would seriously shit their pants at the financial implications of that. Remember Gawker leaking the MLB numbers?

Can we have a poll to see if SLOG has to many polls?

As a die hard Eagles fan- I grew up in Camden across the river and in north Philly- I gotta say, We have to be a bit humble right now, I am ashamed that we cancelled a Sunday game over a wee storm. The Eagles cancelled a game over Snow? Are you kidding me? Somebody needs to be fired!

And I gotta say Goldy- Hawks fan do keep it real and love their team. Ive been to Qwest quite a number of games and it gets loud in there. Parts of hipster Seattle arent Hawks fan cuz most of em dont seem to be from these parts. But working class Seattle loves their Hawks. I mean theyre no Eagles, but we went through our dark days too. When I was a little kid the Eagles sucked major schlong, but we still loved them cuz we knew a golden season was around the corner. The Hawks will be back, I think their geriatric QB being taken out is a good thing for them. This season is lost but them Hawks will be back.

That said, MICHAEL VICK =MVP. the rest is conversation and if somebody says Brady, Im going off!

Well of course it'll be Brady. Right after he wins his fourth Super Bowl.

Just watched your precious Eagles lay an egg at home and lose to the short-handed Vikings, blowing a bye week in the playoffs. Ha!

Go to hell Goldy. You go to hell too Seahawks haters! The team is in rebuilding mode. They are on their third coach in as many seasons, had plenty of injuries and expected to go now where this year, yet everyone is bemoaning their record and the NFC West?!? Fuck you all! This is the NFL! This is parity! It's what the league has been built on the last 20 years. If I had asked ANY Seahawks fan at the start of the season if they would be excited to find out a win in the last game of the season would mean a division championship and a home playoff game they would have said HELL YES! Yet now, every one is bitching and moaning and rooting for them to loose. I don't get it! This is exactly why Seattle is the worst sports city in the country. So bad in fact it thinks the soccer is a professional sport!

Realizing there was probably a rhetorical and sarcastic element to this poll, I remember reading where a while ago (25-30 years at least, I'm fairly certain) a bunch of folks were calling for a game to be played between the best college and absolute worst of the worst NFL teams. And the NFL team (I wanna say it was maybe one of those early & horrible Tampa Bay Buccaneer teams, right after they came into the league) completely obliterated them. Maybe even shut them out, 40 or 50 points, if memory serves.

This may have even been nearly as far back as the AFL/NFL merger, though I think the point is there was a huge talent discrepancy that most folks probably weren't, and probably still aren't, capable of recognizing.

As far as game atmosphere goes, Bill Simmons wrote a wonderful piece a couple years ago spelling out how all new stadiums, with all the fancy amenities, luxury boxes, and piped in music & cheer prompts are essentially non-descript revenue cows that have rendered any previous home field advantage a thing of the past.

Go back to Philly you snobby liberal elitist.

Well, Goldy, glad you're such a big fan of the Eagles. Remember what happened to their star offense when they came to Chicago? That's right! You got hammered!
And don't give us any bullshit, Seattleites, over the Seahawks beating the Bears in Week Six. Now that we have an offensive line in place, we'd kick your ass in any rematch.

@11: Yeah? The NFC Worst is probably going to be won by a team with a losing record. Don't try to pretend that those teams are good because they were good years ago; I'm a Bears fan, and when I say the Bears are a strong team, I point to their bone-crushing run defense, their stellar special teams squad, and their current record. I don't harken back to their Super Bowl XLI appearance, their Super Bowl XX win, or their old glory days throughout the early NFL; I focus on how well they are NOW.
@12: Vick claims to have turned over a new leaf on that one, by the way. If he says he's seen the error of his ways, and everyone who knows him says so too, I'm ready to give him the benefit of the doubt.

The amount of disgust over the Seahawks' performance this season is probably overstated a little, because 6-9 is about where I had them at this point in the season before the year began. But these things have made the Seahawks fans highly, highly annoyed:

(1) All our losses were blowouts.

(2) Our starting QB's decision-making was suspect.

(3) Several offensive play calls over the course of the year, especially some on 4th down, were drawn up by a class of kindergarten children with unmonitored access to projectiles.

(4) Our lack of a suitable backup quarterback despite a headline-worthy Messianic appearance.

(5) The emblem of the professional Seattle sports fan. We're hardcore supporters, but at the same time, we realize the sisyphean nature of our existence.

It's all cyclical, though. Maybe in 20 years the AFC South will be a laughingstock.

Discussing the situation with friends the other day, we realized that the Seattle Sports Curse dates from February 5, 2006 - the day the Hawks finally got to the Super Bowl.

Think about it: on that day, we still had the Supersonics, we had a winning baseball team, our football team was in the freakin' Super Bowl, fer cryin' out loud.... And Everything Sports in Seattle began to go to crap that very day.

Coincidence? I think knot.....

@29: You and your friends are wrong. The Mariners sucked on February 5, 2006, having come off two straight last place finishes (with another to follow that year).