After Rangers Demotion, Questions About Future of Scottish Soccer With the demotion of Rangers to the third division of Scotland's domestic league system Friday, many have speculated - to a precise and reasonable degree - that Scottish soccer, as an ecosystem for professional sports, will cease to exist. That revenue will dry up, the television companies will walk away and the fans will no longer feel the allure of just one Glaswegian giant in town each year. And they may be right. Celtic and Rangers, famously (and sometimes infamously) known as the Old Firm, not only represent two clubs, a city, or even a sporting culture, but an industry that has been running through thick and thin for the best part of 124 years that now finds itself with little time to get back on its feet. Scottish football was always hitching a ride on its two biggest assets, making the most of whatever playing ability the nation could muster. Everyone involved became dependent on the top two to earn the bread and share the crumbs with the rest of the gang. This worked, for a while, until the bread began getting smaller and smaller. David Longmuir, chief executive of the Scottish Football League (S.F.L.), confirmed Friday morning that 29 of the 30 member clubs had voted to allow Rangers back into the domestic league structure, with 25 of the clubs voting to place them in the third division. In light of the decision to relegate the Rangers newco, as the resurrected entity is known, the club has come out in support of the notion of an S.P.L.2, an offshoot extended league, intended as a second tier to the S.P.L., which will be discussed at the league's annual meeting Monday morning. If accepted as a viable option, clubs will again be asked to vote on the decision to rip up the current domestic structure, from top to bottom, in favor of a new pyramid system with Rangers beginning their sentence in the second tier. But the question on everyone's mind should not be where to place Rangers or what league structure they will be slotting into, but how to set up a league system that can drop the dependency on Rangers or Celtic. The S.F.A., and perhaps more important, the S.P.L., have to realize that however noble their approach to this newco Rangers situation may be, it demands a downsizing from not just the club in trouble, but the rest of the industry. Wage caps, modest transfer budgets and as little ambiguity as possible in club finances from Celtic to Peterhead, as well as initiatives to get fans back to the games, should come before European coefficients or whatever suits Sky television when it comes to development. Yet, a goal is only as good as the man trying to obtain it, and from what Neil Doncaster of the S.P.L. or Stewart Regan of the S.F.A. have shown, little hope remains for such action.