A league system is a hierarchy of leagues in a sport, usually with a system of promotion and relegation between consecutive levels of the hierarchy. They are often called pyramids due to their tendency to split into an increasing number of regional divisions the further down the pyramid one descends. League systems are used in a number of sports, especially association football, rugby league and rugby union.
In North America, a similar league system exists, but without promotion or relegation. Most professional sports are divided into major and minor leagues. While baseball and association football (known as soccer in North America) have well-defined pyramid shapes to their minor league hierarchies, ice hockey's professional minor league system is linear, with one league at each level. The systems for American football and basketball are far less organized.
Famous quotes containing the words league and/or system:
“I am not impressed by the Ivy League establishments. Of course they graduate the best—it’s all they’ll take, leaving to others the problem of educating the country. They will give you an education the way the banks will give you money—provided you can prove to their satisfaction that you don’t need it.”
—Peter De Vries (b. 1910)
“All who wish to hand down to their children that happy republican system bequeathed to them by their revolutionary fathers, must now take their stand against this consolidating, corrupting money power, and put it down, or their children will become hewers of wood and drawers of water to this aristocratic ragocracy.”
—Andrew Jackson (1767–1845)