Updated throughout the day with quick takes from staff.
The best website name ever? Besides "http://doihaveswineflu.org/"? Bitterlawyer.com, a website with more reason to complain than ever thanks to the success of law school graduate and Texas Tech coach Mike Leach, who unlike most of the readers of bitterlawyer.com has no hearings to attend, no depositions to take, and no judges to kiss up to in his extremely high-paying job as a successful football coach. (Bitter lawyers, cry into your large paychecks for consolation.)
The bitterlawyer.com interview has Leach insisting on that wackiest of wacky ideas: not just a college playoff, but a 64 team college playoff.
This business of a four-team playoff or an eight-team playoff is just stupid. I think you have to cut the regular season to 10 games. Then I think you need to invite a lot of teams (maybe 64) into a playoff, but you’d let the rest of the teams continue in an NIT-type deal so that they could play another six games or so, which they need to fund their programs.
This is large-scale thinking, a kind of Mortal Kombat death tournament for college football teams. It will also never happen, both because of the six additional games taking the schedule to 16 games, and because of the convoluted revenue streams keeping the Rose Bowl, Big Ten(leven), and Pac-10 walled off from the rest of the college football fiscal universe. It's as practical as suggesting you saw off your arm and replace it with a chainsaw to fight an army of the undead. And just like that idea, when you see a picture of what that actually looks like ... well, as unreal as it seems, it does have a certain grandeur to it.
It won't happen, but you have to like the thinking, since if you're Mike Leach two feet out on the edge won't do -- you have to get all the way out there to make it count.
This post originally appeared on the Sporting Blog. For more, see The Sporting Blog Archives.
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Why limit it to 64 teams? I can get 25 guys together. Can we play in it? Maybe the Stanford band can get a chance to suit up and be on the field and legally get in the way of the other team. And it should be double elimination so that the tournament takes two and a half years.
by ChiAdam on May 12, 2009 12:31 PM EDT reply actions
Based on that picture of Coach Leach, it looks like he just magically made himself appear with smoke and mirrors, just like his offense, which can disappear just as easily. Texas Tech winning any playoff in any format is just that, a bunch of smoke, not alot of fire.
Or a better caption would be : "Coach Mike Leach interviews Percy Harvey"
by mrpelicanpants on May 12, 2009 5:17 PM EDT reply actions
A 64-team playoff (including tertiary extra games for teams who lose a round) is an idea I posted several years ago on ESPN, The Sporting News, and SouthernPigskin. I was also the first person as far as I know to alternately propose rotating the current BCS bowls as hosts for rounds of an 8- or 16-team playoff instead. I’m glad people are coming on board, but all I’ve ever gotten for the ideas was grief and zero credit.
by fiercey on May 13, 2009 8:58 AM EDT reply actions
Congratulations fiercy. I recommend patenting the idea. We will then be bound to calling it the fiercey 16 team playoff, invented by fiercey. Or the fiercey 8 team playoff, invented by fiercey. To further secure your idea, I recomend buying all potential webnames as well: www.rotatingbowlplayoffinventedbyfiercey.com.
Then they will give you the credit you so richly deserve.
by cnapse on May 13, 2009 9:30 AM EDT reply actions
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