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If You Worked Here, You Could Be Nuts By Now

This correspondent is currently unemployed. Therefore, I'm more than willing to be either the general manager of the New York Giants or coach of the Miami Dolphins.

Scott Pioli and Pete Carroll, on the other hand, already have jobs. Good jobs, in fact, jobs far better than the ones they were offered this week. Patriots fans had to be reassured when Pioli turned down the chance to interview with New York. This again proved he's smart enough to help keep their team a success.

I'm personally of Carroll, so I hope he's strong-willed enough to resist the siren song of the NFL. Frankly, the Dolphins job is one of those assignments that no one capable of doing it well would be so foolish as to even try.

Let's look at why there's a vacancy in Miami. Nick Saban, your classic intelligent, paranoid, on-the-make football coach, left a national championship college team for a king's ransom from Wayne Huizenga. Two seasons later, Saban decided he had a better chance of competing with the ghost of Bear Bryant at Alabama than of winning with the Dolphins.

THERE'S a recommendation. Thanks in part to Saban's own ineptitude, the Dolphins are a franchise with no quarterback, indeed, no offense to speak of, sustained by wonderful veterans on defense nearing the end of their careers. Unlike the Bear, Don Shula and Dan Marino are still around to remind Miamians of better times. A handy rule of thumb is never take a job in a town where they've named freeways after a predecessor.

At USC, Carroll is the emperor of a self-sustaining college dynasty. The Trojans went 11-2 and won the Rose Bowl in a rebuilding year. His USC winning percentage is up there in Rockne territory. Still in his early '50s, Carroll could end up BECOMING Bear Bryant, a college football legend.

Best of all, Carroll works in a city that doesn't have an NFL franchise. He and the Trojans are football in LA, our nation's second-largest metropolitan area. If Carroll, Julia Roberts, and Tom Cruise all arrive at the same restaurant without a reservation, it's the movie stars who must wait at the bar.

All coaches are psychotic competitors. Of course Carroll harbors a desire to return to the NFL for a third crack at success. The hope is he'll be wise enough to let the NFL come to him. Sooner or later, probably sooner, some team is going to relocate in LA, and its first order of business will be hiring legendary Pete Carroll to run the show for the richest coaching contract in history.

Carroll should follow Pioli's lead. Once again, I'm sure there's a part of Pioli's ego yearning for the chance to operate on his own, separated from Bill Belichick. The Pats' inside office honcho, however, had the self-discipline to realize the Field Turf is pretty damn green on the Gillette Stadium side of the street, too.

The Belichick-Pioli relationship is difficult to describe, even for them. They're not equals exactly, nor is Belichick the undisputed boss. It's more that Pioli is the coach's alter ego.

"He sees things as I do," Belichick once said.

The closest parallel I can draw to these two guys is the relationship between Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson. Lee was Jackson's boss, sort of, but their minds ran so alike the flow chart didn't tell the story.

"I never troubled to give him instructions," Lee said after Jackson's death.

Pioli must know breaking that relationship would be a considerable trauma both personally and professionally. He surely must know the new Giants' GM will inherit problems 1 and 1A, namely, what to do about Tom Coughlin and, how do we get more out of Eli Manning? It's quite possible problem 1A has no solution.

Pioli decided to stay where he was happy, productive, was part of three going on four NFL champs, and where Tom Brady is quarterback. Only the most provincial New Yorkers (all of them) could argue he made a poor choice.

Coaches and executives switch jobs all the time. It's a cutthroat racket, and everyone's entitled to climb towards the top of the mountain. But some guys REACH the summit. After that, all moves are sideways, attempts to decide which side of the peak offers the best view.

Bill Parcells can't find a comfy spot up there, which is just his nature. Pioli decided Route One was all the vista he needed for now, a mature choice in a profession for overgrown children (no offense, sportswriting's even more so).

Well-wishers can only hope Carroll understands that for him the sight of sunset over the Pacific is far lovelier than sunrise over the Atlantic.

posted by Michael Gee @ 11:10 AM