Though not much of a soccer fan myself, I've recently been reading newspapers from overseas in an attempt to gauge the relative hype over the upcoming, quadrennial world football (theirs, not ours) championships, aka, the World Cup.

In so doing, I discovered several interesting things I didn't fully know: David Beckham is to England what MJ once was to the U.S. (and perhaps even more so), Italy and France are among the favorites to win next month's tournament in the Far East, and obsessing over local soccer scores might be even more ridiculous than taping "Baseball Tonight" seven days a week -- not that I do that anymore. Seriously. {INSERT_RELATED}

But in my background research, I did come up with an interesting, if not entirely original, idea. What if Major League Baseball adopted English soccer's rules of relegation in an effort to promote competition and increased fan interest among some of the league's current also-rans?

Not so long ago, ESPN baseball guru Peter Gammons outlined the same idea, and though I highly doubt it would ever be considered by Bud Selig or the owners group, it does make for some interesting bleacher chatter.

In short, here's what happens: the English Premiership is their "show" -- the major leagues. It consists of 20 teams and is dominated by Manchester United, the English Yankees (though Arsenal won the title this season, with Man U's third-place finish threatening to have Steinbrenner-ian consequences near London). Below are three divisions, the First, Second and Third, which are generally akin to baseball's minor leagues, though they do not mimic the farm system where lower teams stock higher ones.

Here's the interesting part: the bottom three teams in the Premiership each season are no longer in the show the next year -- they are relegated to the First Division. In turn, the top three finishers in D1 are elevated to the Premiership.

My idea is this: Create an eight-team "First Division" in baseball's Major League's, splitting them off in the standings from a 22-team "Premiership." Obviously, the Brewers would be among the former right now.

The breakdown would leave two four-team subdivisions in the lower rung and perhaps two 11-team leagues in the upper rung. In order to maintain an adequate supply of postseason TV revenues, eight teams would still qualify for the playoffs, six from the Premiership and two from the First Division.

The Premiership qualifiers could either be respective division winners and a wild card, or -- if the league's did not use divisions -- simply the three top finishers in each.

The First Division would be split into a pair of four-team groupings, with the winner of each making the postseason. Those two teams would then take to the road to play the Premiership winners in the first round of the playoffs, with the other four teams going head-to-head at the same time.

In addition to the playoff races, First Division teams would also be battling for promotion to the Premiership, so the top three finishers each year could play themselves back into the real show.

Too confusing? What's the point? All one really needs to do is look at the calendar. As of May 23, the Brewers are, in essence, hopefully out of the postseason race, and several other clubs are probably thinking the same way. They are clearly overmatched by the rest of the league, and now they will engage in over four months of essentially meaningless baseball, to the detriment of their fans and their own development.

Under a relegation scheme, the Brewers would be a First Division team this year. Assuming a schedule could be devised which creates a proportional amount of games against similar competition, the Crew would not only be better off at the moment (for instance, the early games against the Giants/Braves may have instead been against the Rockies/Tigers), but they would also be playing only for the top three spots in the First Division, two of which make the playoffs, and all three of which result in a promotion to the Premiership.

In addition, bad starts in April and May would not be nearly as devastating. Even their current status of 16 games under .500 would be mitigated by lesser competition, increasing the chances of a midseason turnaround.

Plus, late in the season, Premiership teams hopelessly out of the playoff race would still have the specter of relegation to motivate them. The bottom half-dozen or so teams would all be playing meaningful games well into and through September in an attempt to avoid First Division status the following year. Theoretically, attendance and TV revenues would be bolstered as a result.

Even the All-Star game could change, highlighting the First Division stars against the Premiership studs.

Of course, there are issues with such a plan, namely the difficulty of creating a custom schedule each season based on new teams in each league. If, for example, 65 percent of First Division games would be played within the league (fans would still want to see teams from the Premiership in the other 35 percent), difficult travel schedules could result depending on the locations of each season's group. If seven teams are East Coast entries and the eighth is San Diego, would the system still work?

Furthermore, would the plan reward inadequacy by giving First Division champions an equal playoff say? Perhaps, but it would also be rewarding excellency within that season, and, at the same time, it would avoid relegation being seen as the death knell of a perennially struggling franchise.

Worse yet, would a relegation scheme lead to precisely the result it is trying to avoid -- the creation of a permanent three or four-team underclass? Teams like the Brewers wouldn't magically improve under this scenario; in fact, difficulty in attracting and signing free agents could increase. Longtime First Division teams could, in essence, be blacklisted by big-name agents.

All these things are problems, but this is just a theory. With teams like Pittsburgh and Milwaukee now measuring their sub-.500 seasons in terms of decades, competitive balance can't get much worse. And for teams like the Yankees and Braves, life as they know it would basically go on unabated.

The biggest barrier, of course, to any radical baseball realignment plan is tradition. I can only imagine what Bob Costas would say about the idea. Then again, Bob's a Cardinals fan; he doesn't really know our pain.