Brian Ross
Senior Editor
Minor League News

UPDATED

What's a 'Minor' League?

Minor leagues are professional sports leagues whose players either are:

• A part of a direct system of development that contributes players to a major league (Such as Major League Baseball's "farm" system) or;
  
• Independent operations not affiliated or loosely affiliated (by team, not by league) with any major league. They are populated with players beyond amateur status who seek a shot at a paid professional career in their particular sport but who, for one reason or another, either require further development or have reached the personal peak of their skills at a lower level.

Some minor leagues in baseball, like the Eastern League, are as old or older than the National and American Leagues . Several were early competitors of major league organizations.

Some Western leagues, like the Pacific Coast League, operated almost as major leagues until the majors' Westward expansions to extinguish their attempts at further growth.

As of December 2005, there were forty-eight active professional minor sports leagues operating in the US, Canada, Mexico, the Dominican Republic and Venezuela. If you add the "amateur" hockey junior leagues, there are fifty-one.

Some leagues, like Arena Football, chafe at being tagged as a "minor" league. In truth they are an independent league.

Leagues are "independent" because they do not have a direct affiliation where they serve a major league, or they do not hold either the audience or the financial power to be a direct rival to, or true alternative of, the major league. The modern ABA qualifies this way.

There are a number of semi-pro leagues that are more weekend warrior affairs whose players are of a class that has little or no chance of moving up into other professional leagues. The editorial staff of Minor League News does not classify these as minor or independent leagues.

We have several professional women's leagues which might be classified as semi-pro that we carry as independents. These are segments of sports in their infancy that do not have major leagues or other full-professional leagues above them.

Related Topics:

What leagues are minor leagues?

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