The World's Most Popular Sport Uses a System Similar To the PGA's Q-School Replacement Plans

If you want to understand the PGA Tour's new qualification plans, you need look no further than how the most popular sport in the world, football (soccer in America) handles things.

It's really quite simple. Take the Barclay's Premier League, the top echelon of English football as an example: in the BPL, every year, the bottom three teams in the final standings are kicked out of the league and are relegated to the next lower league, the N1 Power Championship. In turn, three Championship teams move up and into the Premier League the next year. Two of the promotions are automatic, the third is determined by a playoff between the teams who finished in the third through sixth places in the Championship league's final standings.

To give Americans some perspective: it would be a grievous error to consider the Premier League a niche league. Of all the sports franchises in the world, Manchester United, a member of the Premier League, is ranked as the most valuable -- more than the Yankees, the Cowboys, even Barcelona or Real Madrid. And in the ranking of sports leagues in the world, the Premier League may well be the most popular globally.

The Premier League is not alone using relegation, in fact, some 27 different footballing countries and their leagues have basically the same sort of system. Those that play well stay in the top flight, and the least of those that don't sink down to the second tier. It really couldn't be any more fair because a year's results are considered.

Now comes the PGA with a somewhat similar plan, yet some question the need for change.

After a PGA Tour player's meeting a couple of weeks ago, Brant Snedecker asked "if everything is so good, why risk change?" Echoing his sentiment, Dustin Johnson tweeted

"Just left the player meeting here in San Diego!!!! I don't like any of the ideas about changing the tour!!! There is NO reason to!!!!!!!!!"

Phil Mickelson may have answered their questions best when he said after the San Diego meeting that "You always have to have change to have growth."

Given that the Tour is simply planning to mimic a tried and true model that has literally decades of proven success all around the planet, this change may not be quite as radical as initially meets the eye.