Most American sports fans know and love the playoff system that every league uses.

Every team plays a regular-season schedule to determine seeding in a playoff format that determines a champion, while clubs that fail to make playoffs get ready for the next season.

This could be different, however. Imagine if there were no playoffs and the regular season actually mattered. Imagine if bottom-dwellers such as the Browns were relegated from the NFL and had to play in a minor league under the NFL.

It may sound crazy, but the majority of the world uses this format in their soccer leagues. The biggest league in the world, the English Premier League, recently crowned Chelsea as champions for the 2016-17 season.

Chelsea earned this by accumulating the most points out of any team this past season. Clubs in the EPL earn three points for every win, one point for every draw, and nothing for their losses. After every club has played the other nineteen clubs twice, the team with the most points is crowned the champion.

At the other end of the table there are the three unfortunate clubs that finish in the dreaded bottom three. These clubs are relegated to the second division of the English pyramid, the English Championship, and replaced by the top three Championship teams that gain promotion.

This places all the importance in the regular season, as there are no playoffs to look forward to. Clubs that get relegated not only have to deal with the process of trying to get back to the Premier League, but they also lose out on millions thanks to the lucrative TV contracts the Premier League has.

For the promoted teams, it gives the players a chance to prove themselves amongst the elite that England has to offer.

While American sports simply could not support this system, it is interesting to imagine what U.S. sports would be with this system in use.