Despite their 1-6 start, the Jets never quit on Bill Parcells.

Bill Parcells isn't going anywhere. Where does this stuff come from every year? All Parcells has to do is grumble about this situation or that, this little annoyance or that, and the world walks away convinced that the Tuna's ready to hang it up.

Why? What in the Parcells' history would provide fodder for such lunacy? Is it his remarkable analytical ability to make a blue sky sound slate-gray? Is it his relationship with the sporting press, which ranges from barely-got-through-that-news-conference-without-exploding to "Here, can I borrow that staple-gun for a minute?"

Is it just Parcells, the Moan, that causes people to hallucinate that he has got something else he'd rather be doing?

We don't see it. Sure, Parcells walked away before, but that was then and this is now. That was the Giants and this is the Jets, and wasn't there a team in between, too?

We have seen Bill Parcells in the TV studio.

Let's face it: The man was born to coach.

And he will retire from coaching someday; this just isn't the day. Not with the Jets doing what they're doing, in the face of what they have faced, in this last year of the century. This is a team that looked like a mortal lock to go into the tank after losing its catalyst quarterback in the first game of the season -- and then began to fulfill the promise of that lock, staggering to its bye week with a 1-6 record and a coach with an upside-down smiley face plastered on his mug.

But that was then. And this is now: The New York Jets, who beat the Dolphins Monday night in Miami, have won six of their last eight games and stand a chance of finishing the year at 8-8 despite playing it without Vinny Testaverde. All they need is a victory over the Seattle Seahawks at home on Sunday.

The Jets of now have recorded each of their last five victories over teams with winning records. The Jets of now, who looked so sick in that loss to the Giants a couple of weeks ago, went into Dallas and became the first team this season to knock off the Cowboys at home.

The Jets of now have a guy behind center, Ray Lucas, who looks more like an NFL quarterback every week. Lucas credits his offensive line, Testaverde, and the head coach with his steady progress through a schedule of uncertainties.

What does the coach see? He sees a 2000 season with Testaverde possibly in it, and Lucas almost certainly involved. He sees a team that is getting better, not worse, and that remains young enough at enough key positions to be a factor in the AFC again next season.

Bill Parcells, in short, sees a future. And what self-respecting coaching addict walks away from that?

The Dallas game ought to have been enough to alleviate any doubt, because that game was so vintage Parcells. He took in a 5-8 team that wasn't playing for anything official, grinding down toward the end of a brutally difficult season, to face a Cowboys team that desperately needed the victory and was playing confidently at home.

And what Parcells got wasn't just the win, but the satisfaction. You saw it in his face after the game, when he credited his players with having enough professional pride to still want to win. Maybe it's impossible to imagine a team quitting on Parcells -- somebody'd wind up with a bloody nose, right? -- but it wouldn't be the first time in athletic history that an elite coach lost a squad.

But it didn't happen. Just the opposite, in fact: Players like Curtis Martin, who also worked for Parcells in New England, say that Parcells is the person who has continued to motivate them. And how? Well, apparently, by surprising the hell out of them: Instead of tongue-lashings, Parcells has been delivering inspiration, telling the Jets he believes in them and their promise as a group.

It doesn't sound like the Parcells you usually see in the postgame news conference, does it? And perhaps what that means is that old dogs, even Hall-of-Fame old dogs, can learn new tricks.

And if that is true, of course, then you could make the argument that Bill Parcells, this deep into his head-coaching career, with this much success and history and acclaim behind him, is still getting paid for learning.

What kind of fool would run away from that?

Mark Kreidler is a columnist for the Sacramento Bee, which has a web site at http://www.sacbee.com/. During the 1999 NFL season, he will write a weekly column for ESPN.com, focusing on the Monday Night Football matchup.