I was watching Major League the other night and wondered if Danny would ever, in his darkest of dark corners of his win-at-all-costs mind, consider tanking a season on purpose in order to be in a better position to get a quarterback the following year.

After initially laughing off the idea, my thought process started to humor it.  If not in today's scenario, would this EVER be an option to him?  If so, what circumstances would be more perfect than these?  QB in his contract year, failed to get his franchise QB in a trade, failed to get his QB in the draft, volatile economy that's cause other capitalists to make desperate decisions, team not expecting to do much, fledgling coach.

After deciding that there just may be a 1 in a million chance he would do it, then came the real fun - thinking about how he would do it.

Obviously you'd need Vinny involved.  They practically shower together, so you'd figure he'd have to be involved in something like this.  Hell, it wouldn't shock me in the least to find out this was all Vinny's idea.

How about Zorn?  Could he tank the team without Zorn's help?  Possibly.  But it'd be much easier if he was involved.  But how would he get him involved without Zorn flipping out?  Money.  I figure for $5 or $10 million, they could convince Zorn to ditch his morals for a second and play along.  After all, should the plan succeed, and they do get their dream quarterback and become an NFL powerhouse, Zorn would be considered the next Belichick. 

But that would have to be it.  Any more and the whole thing blows up.  Or would having one player involved be worth the risk? 

Obviously not Campbell, though that would be the easiest way to corrupt a team.  Portis?  He wouldn't do it for $100 million.  Plus, how much could a running back negatively influence the game?  So who could?

The kicker.

Suisham is hardly the highest paid kicker.  And he's probably not very liked because, well, he's a kicker.  With enough money, I'm sure he could be swayed to the dark side and what better player to have while plotting to sabbotage the season than the kicker.

From there, how hard would it really be?  The actual game plan can remain almost the same.  It's not like we were blowing away anyone last year, even Detriot, so losing by 4 or 5 instead of winning by 4 or 5 would fly perfectly under the normalcy radar.  Little less preperation.  A couple risky gambles.  A few painful acts of conservation.  A few blown kicks.

And it's not like we'd have to finish dead last.  Top 5 would be close enough or, in terms of record, 3-13 or 4-12 at the very best.   That's really only 4 games off our last year's total.  It's not in Major League where they have to lose 100 games.  Just 4 or 5 more than usual.  And although the last two seasons had the worst team having 1 and 0 losses respectively, it's typically a 3 or 4 loss team that's drafting 1st overall.  We'd win a few, show flashes of brilliance, than fall back to our losing ways.  Nothing too dissimilar than actual reality.

And then, low and behold, we're sitting 2 or 3 in a draft that features Sam Bradford, Tim Tebow, Colt McCoy, and a half dozen other quarterbacks that are clearly worth the effort of winning for. 

And in the worst case scenario - the whole thing blows up, he's got the ultimate plan B:  exclusive rights to the movie that depicts the gory details of the most controversial conspiracy in sports history, which would obviously be produced by Tom Cruise.



-- Edited by Aston on Wednesday 29th of April 2009 05:59:53 PM