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:
“Half a league, half a league,
Half a league onward,
All in the valley of Death
Rode the six hundred.
“Forward the Light Brigade!”
—Alfred Tennyson (1809–1892)
“Columbus stood in his age as the pioneer of progress and enlightenment. The system of universal education is in our age the most prominent and salutary feature of the spirit of enlightenment, and it is peculiarly appropriate that the schools be made by the people the center of the day’s demonstration. Let the national flag float over every schoolhouse in the country and the exercises be such as shall impress upon our youth the patriotic duties of American citizenship.”
—Benjamin Harrison (1833–1901)