I love relegation. I knew about it, of course, long before I got off the plane in Abu Dhabi in the heavily Euro-influenced UAE. But seeing it in action … brings home what fun it is and how the NBA, the NFL, MLB could all be improved.

Not that I expect this ever could happen. But it would be fun.

Consider:

The four worst NBA teams? Gone out of the league for the following year to the next-lowest league.

Same with the NFL. Same with MLB.

Long stretches of top-level basketball without the Clippers and Grizzlies. An NFL with the Buffalo Bills sent somewhere far away. The Raiders, too. Baseball without the Pirates or Royals. Perfect. If you can’t compete, out you go.

The problem, of course, is that none of those three sports has lower levels of play that are 1) professional and 2) independent.

But just think if the Triple-A clubs weren’t just talent-holding pens for the big leagues. Imagine if the Toledo Mud Hens and Albuquerque Isotopes and Durham Bulls … imagine that every minor-league club down to the Single-A level, were part of a big, fluid system.

That ended, of course, with the Branch Rickey-inspired MLB takeover of the free and independent minor leagues after World War II. The only surviving “independent” teams are so far down the line in ability that they rate below Single-A. Everyone else is enslaved by a big-league team.

But imagine!

For starters, the end of every big-league season would be fraught with significance. The Pirates, the Twins, the Padres, etc., would be desperate to get out of the relegation zone and would have to play hard till the very end.

And if they ended as one of the worst teams, well, so be it. Send them down and bring up four other teams with rising talent or an ambitious new owner.

I love relegation in the Premier League and here in the UAE.

It works best in the Premier League. A huge topic of converation, and really the only news story in the final round of games tomorrow, is which two teams, from five, will go down to a lower division by finishing in the bottom three, along with West Ham. Will it be Birgmingham City, Stoke City, Wigan Athletic, Blackburn or Blackpool?

Meantime, at the other end, in the division just below, known as the Championship, three clubs are vying to come up, and when they play off to see who gets the final promotion slot, they will fill Wembley. So the excitement works at the next level down, too.

It’s not quite as exciting here in the UAE, mostly because the country has only about eight strong clubs and then about six that provide the other four teams for the 12-club league. Generally, relegation/promotion here is about the same half-dozen sides bouncing up and down.

But, still, with the championship decided with four games to play, and second place all but locked in, it is the relegation battle that remains a live story.

One of the “contenders” is Al Ain, a club with more league championships (nine) than any in the UAE. A few months ago, Al Ain was in the drop zone, as the Brits like to call it, but they have gained 11 points from their last five league matches and now are five clear of Kalba. (Al Dhafra, from deep in the desert, has “clinched” demotion.)

However, Kalba and Al Ain go head to head Saturday, and a victory by Kalba, a tiny club from an enclave of Sharjah on the east coast of the country, would make the final two weeks very interesting.

Kalba already has a 4-1 away victory over Al Ain, and the first tiebreaker here is head-to-head. So if they can win on Saturday and make up those final two points, it is Al Ain that goes down, and that would be a huge, huge story here. Like Liverpool being relegated. And the UAE would be paying close attention to Kalba’s final two games (away to Dubai, home to Nasr; both winnable) and Al Ain’s (home to Jazira, away to Shabab; both lose-able).

Major League Soccer recently considered (and rejected) the concept of relegation. Too bad. At least U.S. soccer (so far) still has an independent league that could serve as the feeder to the top division.

The NFL doesn’t. (We would have to promote Auburn and Oregon from the NCAA, which makes sense on a certain level …) And basketball has nothing but its own D League.

It would work best in baseball, with all the lower-tier teams already in existence.

And why not kick them loose? Think of the money the MBL teams could save, not doing much of their own scouting, letting the small clubs do that and then just buying up their best players, as is the case in European soccer.

Relegation! Stories at the bottom as well as the top. Stories in the lowers leagues, top and bottom. More fun, more interest, more money.

I’d love to see it. I know I won’t.