For SCCL teams technically there is no promotion or relegation. The purpose of the league is to create a competitive league that minimizes travel. I'm not sure you get anything for winning the league. I believe that there is a end of the season tournament that the winner then advances to a regional tournament. Similar to State Cup. At the regional level you might face NPL and ECNL teams.
Not sure there is a reason for a end of season SCCL tournament as each team will have played each other twice in the Fall and twice in the spring. But the regional tournament would be a chance to play against tougher competition.
Where it gets interesting is at clubs like UFA that decided to give one location NPL and another SCCL. What happens if the SCCL team is better than the NPL? Do they flip flop leagues? If so that's good and bad. Get to play against better competition but now have to travel more.
The reality is, you don't have to travel far to find good competition. If you want travel, play DA or ECNL. Otherwise play teams in your local area.
Here are the Georgia Teams in the various leagues (doing this for boys at the o5 level, but probably similar across the board) :
ECNL:
Atlanta Fire
GSA
Concorde
NASA
National League:
Georgia Storm
KSA
Smyrna
Georgia Rush
Inter Atlanta
MOBA
Roswell
NPL
AFC Lightening
SSA
UFA Fowler
SCCL
UFA Norcross
Classic 1
Athens
Steamers
YMCA Arsenal
That's 18 quality teams in the Atlanta metro that could join together for a top league with all games local. Split them into 2 divisions that play a home and away with each team... 16 game season. Then at the end host a tournament where the top 8 play in a division and next 8 play in a second division. You get a season champion and an end of season champion. Or seed them into State Cup with 6 additional teams earning at large births.
If you want to play teams out of state go to out-of-state tournaments. You don't need ecnl, npl, nl or sccl to find good competition. You don't need to drive 3-5 hours either.
And the clubs should form a committee to manage this instead of turning it over to GA soccer. Ga Soccer often has its own agenda and some volunteers tend to make decision based on what helps their club. This way every club is represented equally.
Common sense is the one thing you never seem to be able to find when it comes to the alphabet soup of youth soccer.
This is exactly what it was like before all the clubs got DA at u12. The top two teams in the state usually got promoted to RPL after u13 but could of easily stayed in Classic I and went and played a couple of out of state tournaments to play the best of the best. Friendlies died off and are now picking up again.
The entire soccer community has been watered down. Some of the u12 DA teams last year were just plain embarrassing, Everyone wants Elite when only a handful per age group are really truly elite.
Money, Money, Money--the landscape is forever changed.