Obama proposes playoff to determine Secretary of State; Hillary Clinton slated for the play-in game

WASHINGTON, DC — Barack Obama has taken his desire to see a BCS playoff to the extreme today, proposing an unusual playoff system to determine who will be the nation’s next Secretary of State.

“My administration is going to be about two things,” Obama said. “Basketball, and playoffs. So I have taken the final four contenders for the job, and pitted them in a single elimination tournament, in which they’ll compete in one-on-one basketball games. Winner is Secretary of State, and that’s that.”

Follow SSNN on Twitter!

Obama said the tournament will be half-court, “make it, take it” games, with each regular field goal counting for one point, and threes counting for two. “Call your own fouls, win by two,” Obama said. “Pretty standard.”

The seedings for the tournament were determined by Obama and new Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel, who spent all day Wednesday deciding the details.

“We’ve got Massachusetts Senator John Kerry as the one-seed, because of his height and his strong record in the past,” Obama said. “Arizona Governor Janet Napolitano is the three-seed; she’s got a tough first round matchup on the road against New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson. Hopefully she’ll get some of her hometown crowd to travel.”

When it comes to the fourth seed, however, things got interesting.

“Well, obviously Hillary Clinton was going to be one of the seeds,” Obama said. “She should have probably been the number one seed, to be honest. But because she’s a woman and because deep in my heart of hearts I really really really hate her, I’m putting her in the play-in game. She’s going to take on John McCain on a neutral court, and the winner gets to go to Boston and play John Kerry.

“I hate to have to make Hillary work any harder than she has to get anywhere with me,” Obama said. “Wait, but then again, I don’t hate it at all. I love it.”

Obama said he expects some criticism from Hillary Clinton supporters, but he’s not fazed.

“Look, it’s a tough road that she’s got to travel, playing McCain and then Kerry and then one more game, all on the road. But it’s also pretty freaking tough to negotiate with Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and it’s even tougher to look Vladimir Putin in the eye and stare him down. So I want to see if she can bang bodies in the paint before I send her out there, you know?”

Obama said that if the Secretary of State tournament works, he’s planning on hosting a quadrennial “Pressure Shot Secretary of Defense Championship,” and a biannual game of S-U-R-G-E-O-N-G-E-N-E-R-A-L.