Fire Unverified Voracity Dot Com

The tenets of national socialism. Newspaper are dumb and failing and articles like this are pretty much why:

As you might imagine, Michigan football fans aren't taking Saturday's loss to Toledo too well.

Some are wondering if it is more embarrassing than last season's loss to Appalachian State. Others have come to the realization they can never again ridicule arch-rival Michigan State about its back-to-back losses to Central Michigan.

One fan has established a website dedicated to getting coach Rich Rodriguez fired.

Ever since the Fire Ron Zook thing, goofballs have set up shop on "Fire X" domains. They know the media will give them free publicity because they are desperate little hit machines and "Fire X" stories get attention.

Want proof?

• lesfiremiles.com
• firecoachmeyer.com
• nomorebrown.wordpress.com (notably silent since Saturday)
• and, the kicker: firepetecarroll.org

What do these sites have in common? 1) They're run by internet speculators trying to create money from outrage, 2) they attack the coaches that won the last four BCS national championship games, and 3) at some point newspapers gave them free publicity as evidence that lol internet.

A few more: Fire Bret Bielema, Fire Jim Tressel, Fire Joe Paterno, Fire Kirk Ferentz.

It would be news if there was no Fire X site for a team as widely followed as Michigan, but, you know, whatever as long as we get a bunch of hits for this article. Please continue to poison your brand name with inane content; the last one out of the building should turn off the light.

As long as I'm angry. The NCAA hockey committee is considering a proposal to wildly revamp the tournament seeding process: only teams 1-4 would actually get seeds and the rest of them would be placed as close to home as possible so they can cut down on travel costs. This would force first-round matchups between schools in the same conference.

This, of course, comes a month after the NCAA announced St. Louis as a regional site in 2011, rejecting proposals from Toledo's new arena and Yost to do so. WCH slams the idea:

It's not surprising to see this come from the NCAA. They've never really cared about the integrity of their events, so long as they can maximize their profit. Of course, other ways to cut costs would be not adhering to the stupid "No home venues, unless it's a WCHA team, in which case it's totally cool" policy, and not scheduling a regional in freaking St. Louis. And if the number one concern is keeping teams from the same conference together in the NCAA tournament, it makes it look even more ridiculous that the WCHA gets to host the Midwest regional in Wisconsin 50% of the time.

Co-sign. NCAA regionals take place in half-empty buildings with no atmosphere because of a moratorium on home-ice sites put in place after Yost hosted earlier this decade and people complained. This hasn't stopped home-ice regionals all over the WCHA, but it has stripped the CCHA of one of its few reasonable options.

The obvious solution: let top seeds benefit from their excellent seasons by hosting regionals. You'll get sellout crowds most of the time at boutique prices, and #1 seeds will get whatever small advantage playing at home provides to reward them for their performance.

Or we could just throw out the idea of seeding entirely and have all-WCHA regionals.

Yikes. Penn State is favored by 24 on Saturday, which is the largest spread like ever against Michigan. It is literally the largest spread since Bo arrived.

Got beef. I'm not sure what Jim Leavitt's problem is with Rich Rodriguez, but it's real, yo:

"Who would have thought Toledo would go in and beat Michigan, with Rich Rodriguez and all his infamous wisdom, whatever it is there," Leavitt said. "Who really would have thought that? My point is that you've got to be ready at any time to play. It doesn't matter if Michigan is putting in a new offense or not, you would think the talent level would be a little bit different."

Actually, I might know: Rodriguez pirated OL coach Greg Frey and QB coach Rod Smith away from USF a year before he left West Virginia, and given his constant focus on recruiting Florida the two have undoubtedly crossed swords on the trail.

This, I believe, is the third time Leavitt has taken a shot at Rodriguez in the past year or so, and this one was totally unprompted.

LOL, no. When not Demanding Excellence, West Virginia boards have been aflame with delicious rumors to the effect that Rodriguez is planning a departure to Clemson. Here's our old friend EERHole declaring it's "more likely to happen than not." This is wack internet speculation clearly derived from West Virginia fans' paranoid revenge fantasies—the Scout board that is EERHole's home now has guys openly questioning the validity of their information—and will be enormously unlikely until such time as it's actually announced.

So that's not that interesting, but what is interesting to me is that Angelique picked up on the internets scuttlebutt and called Rodriguez's agent:

Mike Brown, Rodriguez's agent, dismissed such a scenario.

"Coach Rodriguez has the best job in college football," Brown said Monday afternoon. "He is a very focused 'Michigan Man.' I know 100 percent Clemson University has no intention of contacting coach Rodriguez."

Brown emphasized he is a Clemson graduate and said he has some insight into what is going on with that program, however he declined to be specific.

This all hinges on the idea that Rodriguez hasn't signed his contract yet and could escape without paying another buyout—preposterous, especially given the check M wrote to WVU—and that a Clemson athletic department that just got socked with a major buyout of its own (they just extended Bowden last year(!)) would have the scratch laying around to pick off a coach who would then be marked as a Petrino-level job hopper with all the scorn and recruiting issues that would imply.

Uh… count me in as a doubter.

Etc.: Maybe this Adidas thing was not a good idea? Curses.