Besides the continuing snail's pace investigations into allegations of widespread steroid use & abuse, what does WWE have in common with Major League Baseball? Here's a clue. It's a common link between MLB and the National Hockey League.

It's a farm system. Baseball & hockey have had it for years. Vince McMahon has cultivated such a system within the last decade, and he's finding out just how well it can work, and how it can also work against him.

The bare bones of the system started with a series of training camps in the late 90's that WWE ran under the management of former NWA champion Dory Funk, Jr., who was employed for a brief time by WWE in the mid-80's (remember when he was known as "Hoss"?) in a feud with the late Junkyard Dog. Those camps helped develop the likes of Val Venis, Mark Henry, TNA World champ Kurt Angle (to prep him for the pro scene) and WWE World champion Edge. Such a system, however, couldn't last forever, so McMahon moved up the ladder, shall we say, and took the next logical step.

That next step was the establishment of "developmental territories", smaller independent promotions that would work in conjunction with WWE to develop new stars. Ever the visionary, McMahon realized that he couldn't continue a bidding war with rival WCW, then owned by Ted Turner, so he had to prepare for the future and develop the next generation of WWE Superstars & Divas himself. The top "farm" for WWE is Ohio Valley Wrestling in Louisville, which has sent about a zillion people to the "big club" the last few years, including John Cena, Bobby Lashley, Elijah Burke, Chris Masters, and Eugene (Nick Dinsmore).

For a while, Raw color analyst Jerry Lawler had a similar deal for his hometown promotion in Memphis, but WWE severed its ties with Memphis Championship Wrestling as a developemental program a few years back. Until recently, Jody Hamilton's Deep South Wrestling outside of Atlanta was the #2 "farm", but WWE severed ties with DSW earlier this year, and moved their farm to the revived Florida Championship Wrestling, under the stewardship of Steve Keirn. King Booker's PCW promotion in Texas isn't officially a developmental program for WWE yet, but recently, Booker began bringing in talent from rival TNA, which led some to believe that Booker might be thinking about leaving WWE when his contract comes due. Given the present corporate mindset, it'd have to be a special occasion for WWE talent to be on the same bill with TNA.

It's been written that the current incarnation of ECW is to be rebooted as another developemental program, albeit on a more national scale, creating the prospect of the 3 WWE brands being a stepladder system where rookies would start at ECW, then move to Smackdown or be fast-tracked directly to Raw.

The downside is that too many of the talents called up in the last few years were brought up too soon, not so much because of injuries to established stars, but because of the mistaken perceptions of the McMahons that they were ready for the big time after one shining moment or two in the "minors". Masters, Carlito, and Lashley fit into this category. Cryme Tyme is back in OVW because 1) Uncreative doesn't feel they're ready for a tag title feud and 2) they were rushed too quickly. At least Stephanie and her staff are recognizing the mistakes already made and trying to make repairs where needed before the wounds become too, well, infected. Let's give them credit for that.

So how does the system work now? Let's try to sort it out:

AA: Florida Championship
AAA: Ohio Valley Wrestling, ECW on Sci-Fi
The Bigs: Raw & Smackdown.

The "single A" minor league would be OVW's new sister promotion, Derby City Wrestling, which was created recently to showcase talents who don't have WWE developmental contracts and thus won't get premium time on OVW television. I'm guessing that if some of the DCW kids do eventually get those contracts, they might either move over to OVW or be sent to FCW.

Compare it to baseball. The defending World Series champion St. Louis Cardinals, coincidentally, have their top farm team in Louisville. Don't you just love serendipity? NL Central division rival Houston has a farm team in my hometown, playing in the short-season NY-Penn League, which is the first rung up the ladder to the major leagues.

Maybe that's why "Tough Enough" is already a distant memory. The shortcut to the top has been closed for a while.