Column: Relegation is football’s teacher of hope

PARIS (AP) — Those who have experienced relegation, football’s annual ritual culling of the weak, say the pain of being sent to the next league down is almost as intense as the grief of death.

Players weep together in their changing rooms. Those that can, flee in the offseason to other teams. Heads roll. Jobs are lost. Salaries are slashed. When Leicester City, the team that thrilled this season by winning the Premier League, suffered the indignity of dropping to the third tier of English football for the first time in its 124-year history in 2008, angry supporters hurled beer mugs at the garden gate of manager Ian Holloway, who was then let go by the club.

”Absolutely horrendous,” Holloway now recalls, speaking in an Associated Press interview. ”For me it was worse than any supporter because I cared that much and I was trying to build a career.”

Yet here is the curious thing: Holloway and others in the industry say they wouldn’t have it any other way. You get a resounding ”no,” every time, when you ask if football should offer the same safety net as pro sports in the United States, where leagues don’t relegate teams no matter how atrocious they are.

After one of the worst seasons in NBA history, losing 72 games, winning just 10, the Philadelphia 76ers will still be in basketball’s showcase league next season. The Detroit Lions lost all 16 of their games in 2008, making them the worst team in NFL history, but weren’t banished as Leicester was – a lower-league spell in the wilderness that made this season’s Premier League triumph only sweeter and more remarkable.

Not having the threat of relegation hanging over their heads, keeping them on their toes, is unthinkable, undesirable even, for Europeans.

”That is like flat-lining,” Holloway said. ”It wouldn’t float my boat at all. I would not have my jiggle, as I call it, when I wake up in the …

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