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The problem with James Bond villains is timing. Or maybe patience. A gunshot to the head? Nah, too quick, too obvious. Where's the taunting? Where's the tease? Why end the threat with a speeding bullet when you can savor the agony with a slow-moving laser beam creeping up towards Connery's haggis?
You have to pick your poison. Same goes for football fans. Do you want to get the losing over with quickly, and move on to the next evil scheme? Or do you want the tease of greatness, only to inevitably face defeat with a side order of acrimony?
Because that's the not-so-subtle difference between Bobby Petrino and Bill Parcells.
Many of us thought Petrino was going out like a bitch when he bolted the Atlanta Falcons after 13 games and crawled back to the college ranks, where he undoubtedly belongs. His attitude towards his staff of assistant coaches was akin to that sleezeball that grabs the last parachute on a plummeting plane, opens the hatch and calls out, "Enjoy the rest of the flight!" before leaping to safety.
That bitchly behavior continued once he took the job at Arkansas. Is there anything worse than when a coach, athlete, celebrity of any kind pretends they live their life in an echo chamber? Like when Petrino told the media that he was unaware of the tidal wave of criticism about his decision? "To be honest with you, I haven't heard any of that. I haven't watched any of it. I've just been working on what we need to get done here. ... We're going to go forward," he said. C'mon, Bobby, don't be a punk. The only guy who can get away with the "I was unaware of that criticism" is George W. Bush, and that's because he's given carefully selected morning reading material and attends rallies with even more carefully selected participants.
But here's the bitter pill about Petrino's move: There's something valorous about it. There's something impressive about a coach not being bull-headed or self-deluded about the reality of his surroundings. His team didn't like him. The pros were harder than the preps. It wasn't going to get any better, although one could argue that it couldn't get any worse ... unless Alge Crumpler is accused of staging fights between endangered spotted owls or something.
Petrino pulling the plug this early was an admission that he doesn't have the chops to be a professional football coach - hey, neither did Pete Carroll. Some guys are just better suited for the amateurs, where the focus is on making hallow promises to high-school juniors and game-planning against defensive secondaries whose key players will be working at Jiffy Lube within the next five years.
Petrino pulling the plug this early was also a gift to the Falcons. Rather than watching a guy struggle through another season, ending with his probable firing, Atlanta can now speed up the rebuilding process with what it hopes is the right man for the job. Looking at it objectively, it ended rather well for both parties.
Bill Parcells and the Miami Dolphins will not end well. It never does. Parcells is the only man in football whose welcome can inspire greatness, but whose exit is appalling when that welcome is worn. The messy high-profile divorces he's had in the NFL are on a Spears/Federline level.
Parcells comes to Miami with a mandate to help rebuild a crumbled mess. There will be blood, as the Tuna slashes through a Junior Varsity roster. Based on his track record, he will quickly transform the roster into that of a contender; and then it will all go to hell as Parcells is lured away by another interest or has a public spat with someone on the team or just decides that he's lost his smile again. It never ends well, even if the team continues to thrive based on his moves and influence (see Edwards, Herm).
What makes this Dolphins situation a tad different for Parcells is that, for now, he's not going to add coaching to his duties as vice president of all he surveys. While there's no question he's a solid judge of talent in a front office capacity, I wonder how much actually coaching these players means for the dramatic reversals of fortune on Parcells's teams?
The Fish will improve under the Tuna, because there's nowhere else to go but up. But without him on the sideline, they won't have the stunning postseason success of some of his other reclamation projects. Which means they won't have the success Parcells, his boss and Miami fans are looking for. Which means that, eventually, this thing is going to end in uncomfortable failure.
There's an old sports adage that coaches are hired to one day be fired.
In the case of Petrino and Parcells, they're hired to one day abandon. It's just a matter of when.
Published on the web and www.SportsFanMagazine.com since 1997, "The Jester's Quart" is a weekly satirical look at sports, pop culture and why NHL Commissioner Gary Bettman is a jackass. Columnist Greg Wyshynski is the Senior Editor for SportsFan Magazine in Washington DC, and the Senior Sports Editor for The Connection Newspapers of Northern Virginia. His book "Glow Pucks and 10-Cent Beer: The 101 Worst Ideas in Sports History" can be ordered now. Email Wyshynski at jestersquart@hotmail.com.
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