We've been sitting on this prompt for a while and there's no better time to break it out than when the top live sporting event of the week is watching The Last Dance when it first airs.

Please tell me the most unnecessary as-yet-unmade sports documentary that you would still watch the moment it came out.

— Jay Busbee (@jaybusbee) April 16, 2020

Someone please forward this post to Bob Iger. Thanks in advance.

The Last Ride

Somebody already took "Dock Ellis throws a no-hitter on LSD" so I guess I'll settle for one of the most ridiculous college football stories of our time.

Imagine the successful head football coach at a football-mad and success-starved college program gets in a one-vehicle motorcycle accident that he's fortunate to escape with minor injuries. Two days later, the coach, sporting a neck brace and a visible case of road rash, opens his press conference by thanking everyone for the support for him and his family. A Sugar Bowl hat is perched on his head.

"I don't remember a lot about exactly what happened," says the coach, before going into a detailed account of a one-man motorcycle accident.

What if I told you the coach was lying his ass off?

I am, of course, talking about Bobby Petrino's 2012 downfall at Arkansas. Mere days after that press conference, Petrino's story began to unravel. The then-51-year-old married man and father of four had not, it turned out, been alone on that motorcycle. The young woman Petrino said had stopped her car to help him after the accident? Tape of the 911 call revealed she was actually Petrino's passenger. She was also, notably, his mistress of more than a year—a 25-year-old former Arkansas volleyball player who Petrino had hired to the athletic department without disclosing his, uh, conflict of interest.

As these details emerged, Petrino was placed on administrative leave by athletic director Jeff Long. One day after a "Save Our Coach" rally drew "modest" support on campus, Long fired Petrino with cause. In a written statement, Petrino finally accepted "full responsibility" for his actions, though he also left room for self-pity:

The simplest response I have is: I’m sorry. These two words seem very inadequate. But that is my heart. All I have been able to think about is the number of people I’ve let down by making selfish decisions. I’ve taken a lot of criticism in the past. Some deserved, some not deserved. This time, I have no one to blame but myself.

Suddenly without a coach in mid-April, Long didn't have many replacement options. He turned to a man as desperate as him: John L. Smith, who'd taken two years away from coaching following his disastrous tenure at Michigan State before spending the last two seasons as the Razorbacks's special teams coach. (Yes, special teams. Not a typo.)

Smith was in such dire financial straits that he accepted a ten-month deal with 71% of his pay deferred, which aroused suspicion that he was trying to avoid his creditors. Smith filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy a week after signing the contract. The aforementioned creditors later sued Smith for fraud, accusing him of hiding his assets, and settled for $750,000.

In Petrino's final three seasons at Arkansas, the Razorbacks won 29 games. In the eight seasons since, four coaches have combined to win 37 games.

I need every salacious detail, please.

— Ace

[Hit THE JUMP for the rest of our responses.]

The Breakaway History Forgot

I'll take whatever he had

My urgent, unneeded documentary is about an event that no longer happened in the eyes of the sporting world: stage 17 of the 2006 Tour De France.

By 2006 I'd been working from home long enough to have developed the habit of flipping on the Tour annually, because it was a month's worth of gorgeous helicopter shots of France interspersed with enough sports to keep you interested but not enough to prevent you from working. Along the way I'd accidentally become invested in outcomes.

So: 2006 was probably the apex of cycling's doping scandal. Don't do drugs, kids, but if you're going to make sure you're also racing in the Tour De France because it makes amazing spectacle. Thirteen guys including the two race favorites were expelled from the race they day before it started. Lance Armstrong had retired the previous year, so you went from a situation where Armstrong's team rode all the mountains at a withering pace and there was no real drama to the most wide-open race I'd seen since I started watching.

The rhythm of cycling is baked in: some guys wander off the front of the pack early in the race. They alternate turns at the front where the wind resistance is highest; they build up a significant lead; they are reeled in by the peloton and the relentless math of watts. 2006 went completely off the rails.

One of these breakaways finished a half-hour ahead of the rest of the race on stage 13, propelling Some Guy named Oscar Pereiro into the lead. Landis clawed the yellow jersey back on Alpe d'Huez two stages later, then imploded the next day, falling to 11th. Stage 17 was the last mountain stage and the last opportunity to make serious headway before the final time trial.

This is what Floyd Landis did. He went back to his hotel room and did every drug he could find. He took horse tranquilizers, blood thinners, blood thickeners, uppers, downers, a DVD copy of Fawlty Towers someone had put in a blender for like a half hour, EPO, testosterone, estrogen, crank, amphetamines, and powdered Dolly Parton aura. Then he had his team run the peleton ragged, rode off the front of the race, caught the breakaway, dusted it, and descended the final climb like a peregrine fuckin' falcon—he took a minute off the leader on a descent—to put himself back in striking distance.

It remains one of the damndest things I've ever seen. It may have been erased from history but it remains legendary; after Chris Froome did something similar in the 2018 Giro d'Italia a rider said he "pulled a Landis."  (That rider then had to state for the record that he "didn't say that Froomey went out and railed a load of gear" and that he merely meant Froome had pulled off a "bigger comeback than Easter Sunday.")

Landis won the time trial, and then the race, and then his test from stage 17 came back with a testosterone:epitestosterone ratio almost three times the allowed maximum. He was stripped of his title and then embarked on a years-long odyssey of court cases against everyone and everyone in cycling. There's a death, a hacking conviction, betrayal every which way, and Lance Armstrong comeuppance.

Was anyone in that race clean? Should Landis have been disqualified for his sheer audacity? How predictable was it that Landis would eventually get into the pot business? And how much is the spectator willing to overlook for the spectacle?

So yeah it doesn't exist anymore but I need an Unsolved Mysteries-style re-enactment of Floyd Landis getting a blood transfusion from Dracula interspersed with Phil Liggett and Paul Sherwin marveling at one man against the wind.

— Brian

Giving Yost His Due

also inspired the nerf football, few people know this

What if I told you, the greatest player, greatest coach, and greatest athletic director in college football history was the same man?

Fielding Yost would. And his self-aggrandizement, along with his racism, is probably the reason he is barely mentioned, even when his era is covered. Historians even create arbitrary cut-offs around his career just to ignore him. Like SEC fans, Yost was so insistent on his own greatness that everybody else still groans at having to hear it. A century removed from all of that, it’s time to put Yost in his place.

Chapter 1: The Yost Affair

We begin with Yost’s Confederate-by-choice father, and Fielding’s upbringing in West Virginia concurrent with the beginnings of college football. We explore the Wild West of the game as it evolved from a preppy pastime to national interest, and Yost’s barely talked about playing career (3-time Heisman?) and role as the most infamous ringer of the era. We then follow him on his vagabond early coaching career across the country, finally landing at Stanford where he built their program in a year.

Chapter 2: Point a Minute

Michigan hires Yost. We go over his up-tempo, spread-for-the-time playbook and how it dominated the Yale-style two yards and a cloud of dust teams of the age. We go over his early star players and the accusations around like, particularly Willie Heston, whom he brought over from Stanford. Also the first Rose Bowl and how that came about. And the origin of the Brown Jug.

Chapter 3: Stagg vs. Yost

The Germany Schulz era and Chicago rivalry, up to leaving the Big Ten. We introduce the University of Chicago, how it was set up to be the first football factory, and Stagg’s and Michigan president James Angell’s constant underhanded attempts to sabotage or get rid of Yost. There's the Walter Eckersall recruitment that proves both schools are cheating. We go over Germany Shultz (top five player in cfb history), and Chicago’s hold on the Big Ten, and how all of this culminated in Stagg’s big moment to squeeze out Yost which ended up with Michigan leaving the Big Ten instead.

Chapter 4: The War

Michigan’s time in the wilderness, and how Yost used it to establish Michigan’s rivalries with Michigan State, Ohio State, Notre Dame, and Penn. Also backtrack to discuss Yost’s offseason mining enterprises and his legal side career. WWI hits and Yost’s other careers are ruined and Baird leaves and Yost takes over as Michigan’s AD, returns Michigan to the Big Ten, wins the 1918 national championship in the midst of the War’s end and the influenza pandemic. We talk about the controversial track meet that ruined Yost’s relationship with Rockne and how that set ND off on their independent path. And the building of Yost Field House and Harry Kipke teams, and Yost’s retirement.

Chapter 5: Benny to Bennie
Oops, not quite retired. This segment is all about building the Big House, while Yost's former players are building the modern college football landscape. There’s the George Little season, and firing Little (who goes on to be Wisconsin's great coach and AD) to set up the Benny Friedman championship teams (plus the insane Northwestern game). Meanwhile Yost is getting the funding and designing the plans for Michigan Stadium. He retires again, and there’s that whole affair with Tad Wieman because Yost isn’t letting go. Lavish aerial shots of Michigan Stadium when it opened.

Chapter 6: A Punt, a Pass, and a Prayer

Yost brings back Harry Kipke (who was coaching Michigan State) and Kipke forces Yost to the press box. There’s the Harvard game in 1929, and then Harry Newman championship teams. We cover the Willis Ward affair, Yost’s role in that, and how Kipke forced it. And then we expose all the cheating, going back to Yost’s deals with the Chicago Alumni Association through to their recruitment of Tom Harmon, and that finally catches up to Kipke who’s being too blatantly crooked (and losing), and that finally gives Angell’s son the opening he needs to throw out Yost’s whole regime in favor of Beilein-like Fritz Crisler. We have a few tense seasons in the late 1930s where Crisler’s technically working for Yost but is really pushing him out. And finally the last few years of his life as a sideline, half-appreciated relic watching all his old enemies enshrined and recognized for greatness he surpassed. His former players, now all relics of a bygone era of football, throw him a "Toast to Yost from Coast to Coast" and we fade out to clips of them talking over panned photos of Yost's career.

— Seth

Tiny Jesus: From Obscurity to Cult Hero

"What if I told you...that in April of 1987 in Sterling Heights...a Michigan Hockey savior was born."On March 14th, 2008 (aka: The Night Yost Changed), with the score 10-1 and the crowd in delirium, Shawn Hunwick burned his redshirt and skated onto the ice in Yost Arena and played just under three minutes, making two saves before time ran out. Most people thought those could be the only game shots he would see in a Michigan jersey. After all, he was just the walk-on younger brother of just-graduated Captain Matt Hunwick -who is STILL playing in the NHL with the Toronto Maple Leafs. That would not be the case at all.

2007-08

• Show highlights of Michigan's phenomenal season, some practice interactions, interviews if there are any with Shawn. His first season was the team's best and highest ranked and had expectations of winning it all in Denver. Walking straight into the college scene right after his brother left and going on that ride...crazy.

2008-09

• Not as much relevancy from this season. Michigan was still very good, getting a #1 seed in the NCAAs, but losing to Air Force in a crushing upset, 2-0, in Bridgeport, CT. Shawn did not play this season. But Bryan Hogan did, unseating senior Billy Sauer and looked like Michigan's best option in net for the next couple of seasons.

2009-10: Out of the shadows

Shawn Hunwick finally made it back onto the ice for about 18 minutes in the GLI against RPI...his first appearance as a scholarship athlete. This would not be his last.

• Bryan Hogan was not having a great year: .901 save %, record just above .500. The team was going to play in the CCHA First Round for the first time since...yeah. Twelve minutes into Senior Night, Hogan goes down in his own crease. He was done. The Streak would be over. Hockey as Michigan fans knew it was over. Little Shawn Hunwick skates onto the ice, makes 14 saves with EVERYONE playing defense like wild banshees en route to a 4-0 shutout of ND. A fun last night at Yost, anyway. 
• Then, a funny thing happened. Following a beat down in South Bend, the CCHA #7 seed, lead by their upstart goalie, went on a tear. They blew through Lake State (5-2, 6-0: Hunwick's first career shutout), stunned a top ten Spartan team in East Lansing (5-1, 5-3), destroyed the #2 ranked Redhawks 5-2, before completing the impossible run by holding off another #15 opponent in Northern Michigan to extend the Streak and hoist the Mason Cup...and (though unconfirmed reports) turn it into a giant fishbowl at Rick's.
• Hunwick also garnered his first (and should-have-been second) NCAA win the following week by defeating Bemidji State, 5-1. They would also defeat the same Redhawks in OT the next night before Kevin Lynch's goal was rescinded and Miami added a tally, ending the Wolverines season. 

2010-11: ...And Into the Light

• Neither Hogan nor Hunwick could claim the starting job through the first couple months of the following season, until, again, injury would intervene. Bryan Hogan was slated to start one of the most anticipated hockey events in Michigan history: The Big Chill at the Big House. With Hogan hurt in warm-ups, Hunwick got his chance and shone brightly as the Wolverine cruised to a 5-0 stomping of their rivals. After that it was all but Hunwick's job. The Wolverines had quite the 2nd half of the season, losing only 4 times before the CCHA semis. Hunwick was dominant: reeling off a 1.95 GAA in conference play and winning 8 starts in a row a one point. 
• Shawn really hit his groove in the NCAA Tournament stopping 48 of 51 shots and seeing Michigan through 2 gut-wrenching games (3-2OT, 2-1) against UNO and CC (who knocked off #1 BC), earning NCAA West MOP. 
• The NoDak game. This could be a Michigan 30 for 30 in and of itself. 40 saves against the best team in the Tournament. Nickname Earned.
• Michigan held a lead after a period with a chance to hang The banner. It was not to be. The team exhausted from diving in front of every NoDak shot and chasing every Not Sioux skater for what seemed like an eternity, just did not have the gas to finish. Hunwick did his part, saving 35 of 38 shots and seeing the game to OT. Sometimes, there are no Cinderella endings.  Shawn would finish the year with a 22-9-4 record, 2.21 GAA, and .925 save %, and more unbelievable moments than you would have ever thought.

2011-12: Year of Hunwick

• Hunwick would come back better than ever, if that's possible. He would finish the season with a 24-12-3 record, 5 shutouts, 2.00 GAA, and .932 save %. Anyone with better stats played at least 350 fewer minutes than Hunwick did. Most played 500+ fewer minutes. Michigan had another very good regular season, obtaining a #1 seed in the NCAA Tournament. Unfortunately, it was another 08-09 flashback, getting upset by Cornell in OT...their third season in the last four to be ended by sudden death. Just like that, Hunwick's amazing college journey was over. His best momemt, though, was yet to come: /play clips from his post-game press conference.
• In the end, Shawn Hunwick did make an NHL roster. He even came in for the final 2:33 in Columbus...about the same as his first appearance at Yost, four years before.

— David