Monday, January 31
NFL: It is what it is, except when it isn't
 
By Ray Ratto
Special to ESPN.com

 ATLANTA -- Dick Vermeil has a grand opportunity to ride into a beautiful sunset, his wife Carol and his extended family at his side. His legacy as a coach is complete, unassailable at last, and he would leave as that rarest of men -- old enough to know when he made mistakes, young enough to correct them, and skilled enough to reap the rewards of that flexibility.

Kurt Warner
Kurt Warner's rise symbolized the up-and-down nature of this year's NFL.

In other words, he is free to retire now, without anyone begrudging him his decision.

That makes him a 50/50 shot to stay, because in the modern NFL, nothing is as it seems, and everything you see is either false, about to be false, or true posing as false.

The St. Louis Rams are world champions, and rightfully so. They conspired with the Tennessee Titans to give us 40 minutes of the worst football you ever saw, and 20 minutes of the best football there can ever be. Anyone who wants to make Hooterville jokes or banjo noises now does so in peril of his or her reputation.

The game, though, followed the season -- it was like nothing you've ever seen. And barring some catastrophic change either in the rules, the salary cap or human nature, it's going to be this way for awhile.

For one, the Rams. From 4-12 to Leonardo DiCaprio? How can that be? Is it really just a matter of signing a quarterback to a long contract, watching him blow out his knee, and then grabbing the first quarterback you can snatch out of The Netherlands? That's just too weird.

For two, the Titans. Is Steve McNair really the wave of the future, or a singular hyperkinetic talent who can make you throw a brick through your TV set one moment and then run to Circuit City to get a 35-incher to replace it by halftime? And is this any way to spend your Sundays?

For three, the coaching follies. With the indisputable fact that only the certifiably loony and inexhaustibly ambitious would coach an NFL team with an eye toward career security now, the surprise is not that Bill Belichick scenarios occur, but that there won't be more in the immediate future. And that doesn't even begin address the matter of other designated successors, like Mike Martz in St. Louis, or Dave Wannstedt in Miami. There's about to be blood on the moon here, and as the saying goes, nothin' says lovin' like a public catfight.

For four, the death of several dynasties. The ascension of the Titans and Rams puts them in immediate danger of being supplanted by even more brazen upstarts. Hand to God, we heard someone trying to make a serious, no-fooling case for the Baltimore Ravens the other night, based on two factors:

1. A young and superb defense;

2. And too much available beer.

But we do know that the 49ers, Cowboys and Vikings, among others, have just arrived at the Hard Times Resort and Penal Colony, a division of Hyatt Hotels, and look like they are negotiating for an extended stay. And out of the smithereens of the old rises the new -- although Lord help us all if Super Bowl XXXV gives us Cardinals-Browns, because then we're going to start hunting for Arnold Rothstein to make the scene complete. There is, after all, a fine line between parity and parody.

For five, the Commish On His Heels: Paul Tagliabue was not confronted by any particularly difficult issues in his State Of Me address on Friday, but there is growing owner dissatisfaction over the $8.6 million fund assembled for top league officials without discussion of the whole membership. Al Davis, the Dark Prince Of Oakland, brought this up several weeks ago to much derision, but as is often the case when Al speaks of his partners and enemies, there is apparently some fire to go with the smoke.

We know this because the owners had a meeting without Tags to discuss the matter, and if you can get enough owners mad at you for whatever reason, it doesn't take them long to find other reasons to be dissatisfied. His term has years to run, and he does have that glorious television deal to wave at the owners when they get uppity, but owners don't have that old unswerving loyalty to the king they once did. Unless, of course, they are the king.

For six, there is the matter of Atlanta's place in the Super Bowl rotation. By all accounts, the week just ended was a barely mitigated disaster all around for a city that likes to think of itself as the obvious choice of the modern big event. From shivering Titans in an unheated tent, to Vermeil demanding to know why his team couldn't ride buses to the Georgia Dome on Saturday because of weather that wouldn't cause a St. Louisian to even put on shoes, to weathermen who predicted locusts and rivers of blood every day without any of either actually materializing -- well, put it this way: Atlanta now stands proudly in the rotation next to Detroit, Indianapolis, Saskatoon and Tashkent.

For all this, Dick Vermeil might want to stay? And we thought he was burned out 18 years ago.

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

 


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