College football coaches across America, many of whom actually have clauses allowing this sort of behavior in their contracts, stood on the roofs of their athletic department buildings across America yesterday, half-naked, three-quarters drunk and fully gleeful at the details of the day.

Actually, that's a lie. Most of them maintained the presence of mind to keep their pants and shirts on.

Still, they'd just been given the news that the NCAA had not only found three more places insufficiently vigilant to keep a pointless bowl game out of their towns, but actually had waived the stringent bowl entrance requirement that a team have a winning record.

Now that doesn't seem like all that much of a much to you, we know. After all, you're not the one standing on your roof waving your trousers at passing news helicopters.

But as a philosophical matter, the coaches realized that the NCAA announcement that winning half their games is now too high a standard for getting into a bowl game has eliminated losing as a firing offense.

This does not affect your super schools, the ones the NCAA spends most of its time protecting. Those coaches can still be fired for the traditional reason -- some bloated superdonor has become sick of the guy's face.

But now that a 5-6 record against I-AA teams can get a bowl game, and maybe (just as an example) a really popular school with a 4-7 record, the only thing stopping coaches from surviving with a 1-10 record is enough bowl games.

So Honolulu is back on board, plus San Francisco and Charlotte. And there are plenty more cities where those came from who could house a bowl game of some sort. Portland ... Milwaukee ... Wichita ... Minneapolis ... Buffalo ... Salt Lake City ... Dover ... Providence ... Cheyenne ... if you live somewhere, you can have a bowl game. Just liquor up the chamber of commerce and send them forth to Indianapolis, have them sit in the lobby until someone will see them, spread a few fruit baskets around, and voilá! A bowl game for you.

And if you get enough bowl games, you're going to need Division I teams. The way we figure it, another 32 cities need to sign on to take care of the entire big school membership. And once you get on the bowl gravy train, there's no longer "too many losses."

To take one example, Tom Holmoe (1-10 at Cal and resigned) wasn't behind the curve, he was ahead of it.

Considering the possibilities is such an adrenaline hit. The burden of actual achievement is now off the table. Coaches can be fired for mistreating athletes to the point of getting the school sued ... or getting caught holding up a convenience store ... or breaking into a dorm ... or (all together now) torquing off the rich donor.

But simply losing? Why? If you can go 2-8-1 with wins over Rutgers, New Hampshire and a hard-fought tie with North Dakota State and still get into the Last Town In Florida Before Your Hat Floats Classic, what can the A.D. say? "You should have done better?"

Of course, the A.D. could respond by saying, "Well, that's a nothing bowl, and you got beat 55-3 by Columbia." But the coach can say, "Wait a minute. The NCAA says it isn't a nothing bowl, and Columbia is the best 4-7 team I ever saw."

And the A.D. would be stuck for a response, left to hope against hope that the coach would get caught sticking up a dry cleaner on the way home from afternoon practice.

Finally, coaches would be like the other tenured profs on campus, except of course that they get to call time outs during tests to give their students the answers, and they make upward of three times the dough.

And, to be fair about this argument, the professors don't have to kick the ass of the professor at Eastern Michigan with archeology midterms.

Now who can't like this? TV viewers? They'll watch anything. Sportswriters? Their holidays are shot anyway. Players? More time out of class. University presidents? You'd have to wake them up first.

So if you're heading home this afternoon and you see someone setting off fireworks atop your local 7-11, worry not. Cinco de Mayo isn't early, and you haven't forgotten Mother's Day (again). It's your local coach, waving his coaching shorts and his newly printed "Get Out Of That Reassignment To The Recruiting Coordinator's Office" card.

Next, the NCAA will work on making it so that coaches aren't in danger even if they can't cover the spread. Oops, scratch that. Las Vegas already has a bowl.

Ray Ratto of the San Francisco Chronicle is a regular contributor to ESPN.com.