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I'm not familiar with your experience to be honest. For example in the Netherlands we have Football right. There's 9 divisions. You get promoted or demoted at

I'm not familiar with your experience to be honest. For example in the Netherlands we have Football right. There's 9 divisions. You get promoted or demoted at the end of the season, such that on average you're roughly in the middle of a spectrum of 5% worse and 5% better teams. Of course there's lots of individual differences and some teams get much better suddenly in one season, and ought to play a division higher right away. But that's an issue for online mechanics as well. Online mechanics make that 5% range more granular, sure, but the notion that thousands of teams aren't rearranged isn't true, that's exactly what happens in most sports! Of course going to the court and playing a quick match with strangers doesn't have this effect, but the vast majority of football players play in some formal sense in a team which plays in some organisation's league system with divisions. At least that's how it is here, although football is an extraordinarily deep sport in most countries and so the difficulty of opposition will be less granular in other sports.

bgilroy26 10y ago
Coming from of the United States and hearing about how federated soccer is all across Europe is really saddening. In the US we have baseball where we have a sane semi-pro system. In football and basketball which are the real money, growth sports, there's the best-in-the-world professionals, the unpaid 20 year old college players and not a lot in-between. In college, a buddy of mine became close friends do with a semi-pro soccer player out of Austria. He wasn't the best in the world and he was an au pair in the off-season, but he was in tip top shape in his late 20s playing soccer for a living. It really isn't like that here. On the top end of the average case scenario, you have 3 years to make a living doing what you've been trained practically 20 years to do and then you're out in most cases. The whole employment market for these athletes would be a lot more sane if it were like baseball where you have families coming out to see minor league football and basketball players at reasonable prices.
- Scarblac 10y ago
  The guy you're replying to is talking about amateur sports, and you reply by talking about semi-pros and making a living out of something. The divide runs deep. The people in those 9 divisions have a game every weekend, and training once or twice per week on weekday evenings, as a hobby. Pro sport is something different entirely.

bgilroy26 10y ago

Coming from of the United States and hearing about how federated soccer is all across Europe is really saddening. In the US we have baseball where we have a sane semi-pro system. In football and basketball which are the real money, growth sports, there's the best-in-the-world professionals, the unpaid 20 year old college players and not a lot in-between. In college, a buddy of mine became close friends do with a semi-pro soccer player out of Austria. He wasn't the best in the world and he was an au pair in the off-season, but he was in tip top shape in his late 20s playing soccer for a living. It really isn't like that here. On the top end of the average case scenario, you have 3 years to make a living doing what you've been trained practically 20 years to do and then you're out in most cases. The whole employment market for these athletes would be a lot more sane if it were like baseball where you have families coming out to see minor league football and basketball players at reasonable prices.

Scarblac 10y ago
The guy you're replying to is talking about amateur sports, and you reply by talking about semi-pros and making a living out of something. The divide runs deep. The people in those 9 divisions have a game every weekend, and training once or twice per week on weekday evenings, as a hobby. Pro sport is something different entirely.