The real “tragedy” — or maybe the main benefit — of the Arizona Cardinals’ punching their ticket to the Super Bowl is that it’ll probably cause mass apoplexy among the NFL “chatterati.” Those are the former NFL players, and non-athlete talking heads, who profess profound knowledge of the sport. Before the playoffs, to a man, they insisted that the Cards had zero chance of winning even a single game, because “you have to play hard every game,” “can’t turn the switch off and on,” “need momentum going into the playoffs,” or whatever hackneyed clichés work for them.

Apparently, they’re wrong. It IS possible to look for several weeks like sludge at the bottom of a septic tank, get blown out in embarrassing fashion just a few weeks before the playoffs, lose 4 of your last 6 games, limp into the playoffs with an 8-8 record that was probably worse than it looked, and still win against the better teams that surged into the playoffs. Who knew?

Not the “experts,” many of whom are outstanding at telling you what’s actually happening on the field, or can unravel in intricate detail the minutiae of a play that’s just been run, but are no better than thee and me at predicting who’s going to beat whom. Indeed, as we learn every March, when the secretary who makes her picks based on how cute the teams’ mascots are, they’re not necessarily better than the most casual of fans.

No matter. As we’ve learned from the political media on the networks, where expert after expert failed miserably to call the shots on Iraq, the financial markets, and other really important events, being a pundit means never, ever, ever, ever having to say you’re sorry. Heck, William Kristol has yet to be right about ANYTHING, and the New York Times actually hired that hack to be a columnist.

I, like everyone else living outside Arizona, assume the Cards will get crushed by the Steelers in the big game. But nothing would surprise me at this stage. Well, nothing except, maybe, Matt Leinart being called into service and winning the thing in spectacular fashion.

Interesting that there’s been next to no public uproar about Dwyane Wade, one of the darlings of the sports media, whose comeback this season with his team of plucky underdogs is one of the feelgood NBA story lines of the year. No, I don’t mean uproar about his play, which has been excellent and deserves the pub. I’m referring, of course, to the publicly aired accusations of his wife, Siohvaughn, filed in the divorce proceedings that D-Wade initiated last year.

In those filings, the soon-to-be former Mrs. Wade accuses D-Whistle — ironically named a “Father of the Year” by the National Father’s Day Committee in 2007 — of essentially abandoning his children, who are alternately afraid of and don’t even recognize him. The more explosive revelation is that, allegedly, D-Wade gave her an unspecified STD, which he presumably contracted from one of his many extramarital excursions.

I don’t know if those accusations are true. People in divorce proceedings often make explosive claims — child abuse being one of the most common ones these days — either to gain advantage in custody issues, or property division in states that aren’t 100 percent “no-fault,” or just to hurt the other party. Sometimes they’re true; often they’re false. Arguably, Paul McCartney’s ex got a few million extra by virtue of some of the bizarre claims she made about him. For all I know, if Wade’s wife has an STD, she got it from her own extramarital activities.

But that’s not the point. The point is that the media have an investment in preserving and burnishing the Wade destined-for-sainthood story arc they’ve created and nurtured: unheralded product of a Midwestern mid-major; burst into prominence in his Junior year; married high-school sweetheart; went to Miami where he immediately became a leader and, unlike that evil Kobe, was able to work with Shaq well enough to win an NBA championship. Humble despite his outlandish athleticism, leadership and accomplishments; well-grounded family man loyal to his first love; playful man-child, as shown by his phone commercials with Charles Barkley — these are the memes that infuse the myth of D-Wade sold to the public. Serial philandering, hearty partying, and transmission of an STD to the mother of one’s children, don’t fit into the narrative, and are therefore being ignored — certainly, ignored on a national stage.

I don’t know if the allegations are true or not. I DO know that pretty much everyone in the media “knew” the Eagle, Colorado allegations against Kobe were true and convicted him in the Court of Public Opinion even as he was being exonerated, after a fashion, in the real court, the one that counted. What’s stopping a similar rush to judgment here, I suspect, is that the media and image-makers actually like D-Wade, and have always had been a bit cold to The Kobester — who’d returned the favor — even when he was the league’s poster boy.

Some people are just Teflon. Wade may well be one of those chosen few. Shaq O’Neal may be another. Shaq has had ugly separations from every single NBA team he’s been on, has trashed them vituperatively, and yet, somehow, it’s never been his fault. Or, if it has been his fault, who cares? Talk about serial philandering, read up on some of the details of his now-resolved divorce proceedings. But it’s OK, because the story on Shaq is that “he’s just a big kid,” and any petulance, pettiness, backstabbing or treachery is instantly cleansed and excused.

Heck, even Magic Johnson, beloved of all in Lakerland despite his abominable talk show of years past, which should have been more than enough to take the bloom off the rose, has a few skeletons in his closet. Yes, it was big news globally when he announced that he had contracted HIV — and, oh, by the way, had given it to the woman who became his wife. But nobody expressed anything but sympathy for him, or (publicly, at least) asked the tough questions about how he got it — or whether he continued to have unprotected sex after contracting the virus.

Magic has many fine qualities. He’s gregarious and outgoing. Obviously, he was an all-time great basketball player. He invests in businesses that cater to and create jobs for the African-American community. He apparently has something of a social conscience. He’s obviously an accomplished capitalist. He’s become somewhat of a public face of HIV/AIDS, and has helped “humanize” that dreaded condition, so that society has become more accepting of people who have the virus, and even the disease. He’s living proof that HIV doesn’t have to be a short-term death sentence. Is that enough? Apparently, when you’re Magic Johnson, it is, and nothing like giving your wife-to-be the HIV virus and (scurrilous rumormongers suggest) unprotected sex even after being diagnosed HIV-positive can be allowed to deface the edifice that the media have erected.

Michael Jordan, Julius Erving, and countless other top, revered professional athletes have their own repugnant personal secrets — which are no longer secret. Just last month, Charles Barkley was arrested for DUI, and the story came out that he’s an inveterate lush, has had many stops for driving drunk, and tried to weasel out of the collar by whining that he was on his way to enjoy some of the world’s best extramarital oral gratification. Yet, none of those revelations have tarnished their images much.

Yeah, I know Sir Charles is on an extended “leave of absence,” but nobody really cares. In Jordan’s case, what has REALLY tarnished his image wasn’t the sordid Karla Knafel affair, or the suggestions of an over-the-top gambling problem, but rather the pathetic job he did as a basketball executive in Washington and, so far, at Charlotte. Once again, when the media have a major investment in hagiography, they’re reluctant to strip away the curtain.

Not so for one Kobe Bean Bryant. He cheated on his wife, and allegedly assaulted a hotel employee sexually. I understand, of course, that an accusation of rape, followed by a grand jury indictment, isn’t some trivial peccadillo that can be laughed off or swept easily under the rug. But you’d think it might make SOME difference that the criminal case fell apart in spectacular fashion, and pretty clearly showed itself to be the product of a politician’s overweening ambition and thirst for publicity, and a gold-digger’s hunger for Benjamins.

Nope. Although he’s regained some luster, Kobe — who, let it be remembered, has never been accused of transmitting an STD, and who, from all outward appearances, appears actually to interact well with his daughters — has never recovered his “cred” with either the media or the public. At least, not with the American public.

This isn’t a call to join in a Kobe pity party. Frankly, I don’t care whether people like or hate any athlete. Some people are rubber, some are glue. The media love to protect and defend some celebrities, and to throw darts at others. Fair or unfair, who cares? Even pro athletes who are hated are making plenty of money, and can find plenty of people to stroke their egos, either for a price or just for the privilege of being allowed to star****.

But I do care that the media conspire to construct false public personas of sports idols — virtual Potemkin Villages of fake biography — and then do their damnedest to assure that even contradictory evidence doesn’t tarnish them irrevocably. Unless they have reason to dislike the athlete, in which case, it’s open season.

I, for one, could easily live happily without having to endure more of the treacly pap about athletes who are solid family men, or devoted to their religion, or fun-loving children in men’s bodies, beloved by all, or all the other non-sports related sob-sistering that passes for sports “journalism” these days. Especially if those bogus images cover up harsher realities. We all could. And not just with athletes, either. Politicians, actors, music stars and other public figures are equally, and unfairly, protected by carefully constructed, fake public information designed to make us think of them as the impossibly near-perfect people they’re not.

Speaking of which, I see where noted red-ass Jeff Kent has, to the sorrow of very few in the Dodgers family, announced his retirement. Talk about an athlete who was “godded up” by a media determined to make a silk purse of a sow’s ear. Only on a team that featured Barry Bonds, the superstar athlete that everybody loved to hate, could Kent manage to be perceived as a warm and cuddly, positive presence.

B. Bonds, incidentally, was an equal-opportunity target. Pretty much EVERYONE he played with, regardless of race, creed or color, despised him. So it’s no surprise that Kent detested Bonds, even though he pretty much owed his MVP to the fact that he was batting behind Bonds. But it’s of more than passing interest that Kent throughout his career seemed incapable of positive interaction with ANY of his African-American or Latin teammates.

Not that you need to be a role model to be Hall of Fame-worthy. Ty Cobb and Steve Carlton are two nasty characters with impressive accomplishments who come to mind immediately. Just don’t try to tell me that Kent was/is a great human being as well as — statistically at least, for several years — a great player. I’ll accept creeps getting honors if their play deserves it, but please, media types — this means you, Bill Plaschke et al. — stop turning sports into a Miss America competition. All I care about in a beauty contest is how good the contestants look in swimsuits. The talent and Q&A competitions are there for the same reason that Playboy has articles — to provide plausible deniability for testosterone-crazed men and teens. Sports “journalism” really, really doesn’t anything but the sports equivalent of the swimsuit competition.

In truth — at least based on publicly available information — Kent’s been roundly detested by his teammates at every stop in his 18-year career. It’s no state secret that his constant carping and criticism intimidated a lot of the younger Dodgers, and that the team didn’t start its late-season surge last year, even after the acquisition of Manny Ramirez, until Kent was out injured for an extended period. Coincidence? I think not.

And for all those who’ve decided that Kent deserves to be in the Hall of Fame just because he’s hit 351 home runs over an 18-year career, please, you’re killing me. He did have one transcendent MVP season in San Francisco, and has had a few other pretty good years at the plate. But just to put matters in perspective, he was batting behind Barry Bonds during his best years — years when Bonds was on base half the time, which meant that Kent saw a lot of fast balls to hit. Even then, his career OPS is under .900 — not exactly the stuff of which legends are made. And he was an absolute hog on ice in every other aspect of the game. No speed or range. Indifferent base runner. Sieve on defense. So-so arm. We should expect just a little more, defensively, from a second-baseman. Joe Morgan should refuse to attend another induction ceremony, if Jeff Kent ever joins him in the Hall.

Regarding Mr. Kent’s shocking rush of manufactured humility and accessibility, and that endearing rush of tears now that he’s retiring, can anyone take it seriously? Apparently so, including our noted, now-national radio talking heads, Petros “P Daddy” Papadakis and Matt “Money” Smith, who aren’t dumb by a long shot, and who’ve got their fair share of justifiable cynicism, except, apparently, when they score a sought-after interview. They practically gushed over how “sincere” Kent was when they interviewed him soon after the retirement presser.

Oh, puh-leeze. “Sincerity” is an imponderable at the best of times. All they can say with any confidence is that Kent finally managed to play to the hilt the part of a person exuding “sincerity.” It’s like the famous Hollywood saying: The most important quality is sincerity — if you can fake that, you’ve got it made. We should never, ever allow public statements and posturing to override the evidence of our own eyes, ears, and brains. Which, in Kent’s case, is that the door couldn’t hit him fast enough on his way out.

While we’re on the subject of objectionable human beings, how about Mark McGwire’s own brother writing a tell-all book about Mark’s steroid use, and justifying this breach of confidence as an expression of love for his brother. Love for the potential book advance fee, more likely. With brothers like that, who needs enemies?

Another season, another Yao Ming injury, eh? A knee, this time — nice break from the monotony of broken metatarsals and tibiae. No offense to Mr. Yao. I like what I know of his personality, and he’s certainly become one of the NBA’s dominant centers — when healthy.

And there’s the rub. It sure seems to me that the big problem with the Houston “brains trust” is that, every season, they fall into the trap of assuming that THIS year, they’ll have Yao and T-Mac on the court for most of the season and the playoffs. Each year, as with Charlie Brown trying vainly to kick a field goal with Lucy holding that ball, their optimism is cruelly dashed. Since the result is almost foreordained you’d kind of think that, smart guys as they are, they might, just once, factor in the likelihood — nay, the near-certainty — of these injuries when making their personnel decisions.

Have I recently stepped without my knowledge into the Bizarro World of DC Comics’ fame? That’s the planet named “Htrae” (“Earth” spelled backwards), ruled by the Bizarro Code of “Us do opposite of all Earthly things! Us hate beauty! Us love ugliness! Is big crime to make anything perfect on Bizarro World!”

I thought that must be what happened when I read that Dan Reeves — yes, DAN REEVES — is interviewing for the job of offensive coordinator of the ‘49ers. Reeves certainly has a decent resume AS A HEAD COACH. After all, he took the Broncos to 3 Super Bowls and the Falcons to 1, although let the record reflect that his teams lost all 4. Let the record also reflect that special last-quarter heroics by one John Elway made two of those appearance possible. Just ask any Cleveland Browns fan.

Given that he was one of the all-time greatest QBs, I tend to defer to the judgment of the aforementioned Mr. Elway regarding the offensive “chops” of Mr. Reeves, Since Elway has publicly stated that he believed he’d have had at least 1, and probably 2, Super Bowl rings but for the stifling effect of Mr. Reeves’s primitive, antediluvian schemes and conservative play calling, I think I know what kind of reference Mr. Teeth would provide, if asked.

Of course, the great, supremely self-assured ones like Elway always believe that they should have won every game. But anyone who saw the stodgy, unimaginative Broncos’ offense of the Reeves years — Three Amigos notwithstanding — has to admit there’s at least some substance to Elway’s beef. That anyone in his right mind would even think of interviewing the conservative, unimaginative Reeves to be an offensive coordinator in today’s NFL boggles my mind. It really is an “old boys club” — stress on the “old” — isn’t it?

I’m shocked, shocked by the revelations in Joe Torre’s new “tell-all” book about the Bronx Zoo. Not at the revelations themselves. None of them is any great state secret.

It’s no great secret, for example, that Brian Cashman appeared to withdraw his previously unrelenting support for Torre at the end. I would only note that the Yankees paid Torre a salary higher than any other manager in the game was making, for one purpose only: to get the Yanks to, and win, the World Series. Given that the Yanks didn’t accomplish either goal during Torre’s last 4 seasons at the helm, it wasn’t entirely out of line for the Yanks to “insult” Torre by making some of the monstrous salary they offered him contingent on results.

It’s also no secret that A-Rod realized that Derek Jeter is the leader of the Yankees, whatever his personal stats might be, and that also understood that in order to have any chance of being accepted as a Yankee, he had to kiss Jeter’s behind and do his best to emulate him. Whether that constitutes a “Single White Female” type obsession, as the book coyly suggests, is another matter.

I also suspect that the book doesn’t put the whole “fixation” into historical context. The beginning of the end for A-Rod’s image as a baseball hero, in my opinion, came with that infamous 2001 Esquire interview, in which he said he’d been a buddy of Jeter’s, then ingenuously intimated that Jeter was overrated, uttering such nuggets as: “Jeter’s been blessed with great talent around him”; “he’s never had to lead”; and “You go into New York, you wanna stop Bernie [Williams] and [Paul] O’Neill. You never say, ‘Don’t let Derek beat you.’ He’s never your concern.” That’s one of many interviews regarding which A-Rod undoubtedly wishes he could have a “do-over.” His relationship with Jeter never recovered. In that historical context, maybe it’s understandable why A-Rod, having poisoned the well so thoroughly, felt his best course once he joined the Yankees was to toady obsequiously to Jeter.

It’s also no great secret that A-Rod has some serious self-image and confidence issues, and that he’s been resented by teammates at both Texas and The Zoo, who regard him as “A-Fraud,” both because he tends to choke when his skills are most needed, and because he comes across in interviews as a phony. This isn’t some special, new revelation by Torre.

I will say, however, that if Torre really wants to float the “A-Rod’s teammates consider him insincere and a phony” claptrap, he’ll have to indict every player, coach, and manager. EVERY one of those people — including Torre himself — is insincere and phony in dealing with the media. What sets A-Rod apart is that (a) he’s actually often — to his detriment — MORE honest with the media than others, but (b) he seems constitutionally incapable of making himself SEEM sincere, which is, after all, the whole point of the exercise. If Torre really wanted to criticize A-Rod, he should have written that teammates hate A-Rod, not because he’s not “sincere,” but because he’s just no good at faking “sincerity,” which is what it’s all about because he’s just not all that good at faking sincerity. Which brings us to Jeff Kent’s farewell address, already discussed.

Let the record also reflect that, for all his insecurities, foibles and peccadilloes, A-Rod did manage to win two AL MVP awards while Torre was coaching him. And let the record also reflect that A-Rod, selfish, narcissistic bastard though he may be, volunteered to learn how to play Third Base so that Jeter, clearly his inferior in the field at that position — it’s not even a close call — and declining in speed and skills annually, could continue to remain in his comfort zone.

What shocks me, rather, is why Torre did the book in the first place. What could he possibly hope to gain from this diatribe, other than, maybe, some book sales? Even if everything in the book is true, and not just self-serving “I managed good but boy did they play bad” Leo Durocher-style self-promotion, so what? It turned out that almost everything Jose Canseco said in his book about steroids was also true, and Canseco is now reduced to boxing against Danny Bonaduce to raise a few shekels.

Not that Torre’s likely to need any tag days, but it seems to me that by publishing this book, he’s certainly reduced the number of possibilities he might have for future employment, the need for which may come sooner rather than later, once the Man-Ramless Dodgers return to their losing, boring ways. Let’s just say that Mr. Torre’s Teflon coating now appears to be sporting a few scratches.

Greater love hath no man than to sacrifice his urine for his team? Disgraced former Mets’ clubhouse attendant Kurt Radomski, who seemingly procured ‘roids for everyone along the Eastern seaboard with back acne and rage problems, now has revealed that he took a urine test or two for Dwight Gooden, back when the drug-addicted pitcher was failing those tests with regularity, no matter how hard he studied for them. No word whether, like Jerry Seinfeld’s mother taking a urine test for Elaine Benes in one of the better “Seinfeld” episodes, the testing company reported that Gooden was menopausal — or white.

“Sugar” Shane Mosley gave a pretty good accounting of himself last Saturday night against Antonio “The Tijuana Tornado” Margarito, proving once again that many athletes are at their best when their life outside their sport is in chaos and disarray. The ring was a refuge for Mosley. Or so it seemed.

The most telling blow of the night, though, was probably landed by Mosley’s trainer, Nazim Richardson, who observed the pre-fight hand wrapping and spotted a substance on Margarito’s wraps that, when moistened, turns them into blocks of concrete. (I exaggerate for effect, but then again, I’m not on the receiving end.) Aside from maybe losing focus when the cheating was discovered, it sure seems that Margarito also lost a lot of punching power. Strange, huh? Makes one wonder how much of Margarito’s previous win over Cotto was Margarito, and how much was his wraps — unless one believes that this is the first time in his career that Margarito’s camp has attempted to perpetrate such fraud.

Kind of reminds me of the much-ballyhooed 2001 Bernard Hopkins – Felix Trinidad bout, where Hopkins’s camp exposed Tito as “Cheato.” And not by accident, either, since the Hopkins cornerman who discovered the similarly illegal wrapping of Trinidad’s hands was — the very same Nazim Richardson.

Hopkins probably would have won the fight anyway, but he might have taken a career-threatening pounding in the process. Remember, Trinidad was one of the few fighters who not only didn’t lose punching power as he ascended in weight class, but actually, incredibly, got more powerful. He’d battered Fernando Vargas so badly that Vargas was thereafter a dead man walking as far as ever again being an effective boxer was concerned. Without the benefit of “one first iron, the other one steel,” though, he couldn’t do squat against Hopkins.

Richardson modestly sought to deflect praise for his crucial contribution: “When you have a good game plan and a very good athlete it’s easy. He turned his pressure style against him.” True dat. But as Mike Tyson once sagely observed: “Everybody’s got a good plan ‘til they get hit.” Mosley’s plan was just fine against hits (few thought they may have been) from gloves not loaded with cement. It’s not clear how well the plan would have worked had the original wrappings been allowed to remain. Seems to me that if I were any boxer on the planet, I’d move heaven and earth to make sure that I had Nazim Richardson representing my interests at the wrapping ceremony.

I find it interesting that the coach of the Dallas high school girls team that beat its opponent 100-0 has been fired after the result became a national cause celebre. I don’t know how I feel about it, actually.

I’m not particularly happy that he had his girls pressing and launching threes to the bitter end, mind you. And it didn’t help matters any that the girls who were subjected to such humiliation were from a special school for girls with learning disabilities.

But there’s blame enough to go around, there, I think. This was a league game. What were the school officials of the losing team’s school thinking of when they allowed their charges to play in a league where such humiliations are possible?

If the idea was that the learning-disabled girls should be mainstreamed, not coddled, well, 100-0 scores may well come with the territory. True, the opposing coach could and should have had his players hold onto the ball more. He most certainly could have told them not to keep pressing or launching threes. But such unfortunate stuff happens. And, by all accounts, the girls on the losing team took the loss in stride, and haven’t been scarred for life.

My main beef with the whole uproar, though, is that this game was hardly the first girls’ contest where the winner wins by 100 points or so. Far from it. Blowouts like that are a regular occurrence in girls’ basketball.

A few years ago, just f’rinstance, a girl named Epiphanny Prince scored 113 points in her high school’s 137-32 win over Brandeis High School. I don’t recall anyone expressing a lot of sympathy for the Brandeis team, and the emotional scarring they got when Prince’s team kept running up the score of a game long since decided, just so she could get the record. Heck, no. Quite the contrary. Her coach, in fact, said after the game: “At the half, we thought she had a chance to break the record so we just let her go.”

Ah, I begin to divine the principle. If all you’re doing is beating a hapless opponent by 100 points, it’s evil and the coach should be fired — after being tarred, feathered and run out of town on a rail. But if you’re crushing an overmatched opponent by a c-note, and it’s all in pursuit of an individual scoring record for one of your players then, heck, everything’s just hunky-dory, and it’s in the very best tradition of American sports.

Like Hell it is. In some ways, it’s worse. Oh, and by the way, while Brandeis High obviously scored 32 more points than the hapless girls of Dallas Academy, they also gave up 37 more, so it was worse based on simple arithmetic.

You may remember Ms. Prince, since she went on to become a key player on the Rutgers women’s team that lost to Tennessee in the women’s NCAA Final Four in 2006, then were called “nappy headed ho’s” by Don Imus. I guess Ms. Prince is somewhat of an expert on emotional devastation at the hands of others, since she claimed she and her teammates had been “scarred for life” by Imus’s crude comments. Too bad she couldn’t have realized that her own crass pursuit of a meaningless high school scoring record might have “scarred” some other young women for life.

Closer to home, Cheryl Miller, later a beloved USC All-American, NCAA champ, Olympic gold medalist, and respected basketball sideline reporter for TNT, scored 105 points in 1982 for Riverside Poly against Riverside Norte Vista. I’m sure the ladies of Norte Vista were absolutely overjoyed to have been forced to become the Washington Generals to Miller’s team’s Globetrotters. In a pig’s eye.

The most egregious humiliation, though, in my opinion, was inflicted by Lisa Leslie, then at Morningside High, against South Torrance High, when she scored 101 IN THE FIRST HALF. For some strange reason, the South Torrance girls didn’t take kindly to being used as punching bags, and had the effrontery to refuse to take the floor for the second half, despite entreaties by the Morningside coach — obviously a regular prince of a fellow — and Leslie herself to come back out so she could score another 100 and set a record no one could match. Funny, but I just can’t recall a whole lot of outrage after that archetypal display of crassness and contempt.

So please, ladies and gentlemen of the media. Don’t be wringing your collective hands about the heartlessness and inhumanity of the coach of Dallas Covenant School, unless you’re prepared to be evenhanded in your umbrage, and dump on Epiphanny Prince, Cheryl Miller, Lisa Leslie, and their high school coaches just as lustily as on that poor benighted schmuck down in Dallas.

Please send comments and criticism — especially criticism — to thonglaw@sprynet.com, where it will be dealt with appropriately.

Now that Tony Dungy has retired, his greatness as a coach will start getting a tad overstated, before revisionism sets in and his “legacy” is taken to the woodshed. Everything and everybody looks better in the rear-view mirror. Of course, everything and everyone also looks SMALLER in that mirror. Which is why, as time passes, even the legitimately, eternally great athletes and sports figures of the past are diminished.

Dungy isn’t one of those immortals. He lost too many playoff games ever to be considered in that category. But neither does he deserve the retrospective downgrading that’s sure to be coming his way.

He certainly hasn’t been a bad head coach. Far from it. In fact, for the most part, he’s been close to incredible, except in the playoffs, where the main “incredibility” has been how often his teams lose to lesser opposition. Mind you, Jeff Fisher’s and Marty Schottenheimer’s teams — and for many years, Bill Cowher’s — have for all but a handful of seasons had the same kind of postseason underachievement. The difference is that Dungy’s gotten more of a pass for that than those worthies.

And it’s not because of politically correct reverse racism, either. I’m sure all three of those other coaches are fine human beings. It’s just that Dungy is really special. Dumping on him profanely, the way talk show callers love to do with most players and coaches, is as obviously inappropriate as, I don’t know, Photoshopping Mother Teresa’s head on a porn star’s body — and no, I don’t mean Ron Jeremy’s. Because he’s so obviously upright, and treats his players, opponents, the press, and pretty much everybody with respect, it’s hard to take real zinger shots at him.

There’s a lot in his coaching record to admire. Forget the ridiculous string of seasons at Indy with 12 wins or more — in this period of league “parity.” The record is hardly to be sneezed at, but he’s had the benefit of one of the all-time great regular-season QBs, and lots of good players, put in place by Bill Polian, who’s no slouch at running an organization. So, outstanding as it was, his W-L record with the Colts was only to be expected. Of course, there’s a big difference between HAVING talent and WINNING with it, but that’s a distinction that seems to escape most people.

It’s his performance at Tampa Bay, in his first head-coaching gig, though, that really impresses me. Just because Jon Gruden came along and won the Super Bowl first time out of the gate with the same players with whom Dungy had fallen short time after time, people forget just what an impressive job Dungy did to turn around the Bucs and set the table for Gruden.

Given that Mr. Gruden has never again approached that kind of success, and in fact has only been back to the playoffs twice since 2002, losing in the wild card game both times, maybe there should be a bit more appreciation of Dungy’s accomplishment. Heck, take away Gruden’s Super Bowl year, when the Bucs went 12-4, and he’s had a dreadful 45-51 record there. Sure, all tends to be forgiven when a team wins a Super Bowl, but 45-51 — including this year’s inexcusable meltdown — is a fair indication of what the Tampa job was like before Dungy turned things around.

No hyperbole there. From the 1982 season, when they failed or refused to re-sign Doug Williams, until Dungy took over in 1996, the Bucs suffered through 14 straight losing seasons, including 12 with 10 or more losses. It was the Sargasso Sea, the Bermuda Triangle, the innermost circle of Hell — choose your own metaphor — for coaching jobs. All Dungy did was go 54-42 in his six seasons — 48-32 after 1996. True, his last season was 9-7, just like Gruden’s last couple.

I originally wrote that the difference was that Gruden’s contributions have been appreciated, and he seems to be in no danger of being fired. Naturally, events overtook me, and Gruden was — deservedly — fired, along with GM Bill Allen. I’m not overjoyed at Gruden’s and Allen’s misfortune, but it’s good to know that the Glazers, who own the Bucs, are equal-opportunity churls and a-holes.

The big knock on Dungy has always been that his teams just didn’t win in the playoffs. He was 2-4 at Tampa, and only 7-6 with the Colts’ juggernaut, and leaves with a combined career playoff record below .500. I can rationalize justify the record at Tampa, given the dreck Dungy started with. But no one can defend the postseason record. It is what it is, and what it is, isn’t pretty.

Some of the onus surely falls on the broad, but sloping shoulders of Peyton Manning, who for all his skills, intelligence, and leadership has exactly as many Super Bowl rings as his less-accomplished younger brother, and who, in the Super Bowl year, was appallingly inefficient. But Dungy has to be assigned some of the blame. It’s not just that he’s had only one Super Bowl winner in 13 years. It’s how many times his teams have lost first-round games they were favored to win.

One could make excuses. Losing to the Patriots when they were the best team in the league, or the Eagles when they were the NFC’s best team, isn’t necessarily anyone’s fault. But even against those teams when they were at their best, the Colts, or the Bucs, as the case may be, had their chances. Winners capitalize on those chances; losers don’t.

The criticism is fair. But it’s a shame that Dungy’s great and enviable achievements — not just as the highest-profile and most successful African-American coach ever, but as a coach of any color — shouldn’t be diminished by being reduced to the one-line caption of “couldn’t win the money games.” There’s been a lot more substance to his career than that. In the end, though, fairly or not, coaches are judged in large measure by two things: Super Bowl wins, and playoff record. Dungy, a sure Hall of Famer, has the former but not the latter.

I don’t have any idea what Mark Sanchez’s pro potential is. I’m pretty sure, though, that his draft potential is unlikely ever to be higher, no matter what logic and statistics a dyspeptic Pete Carroll posted on his website.

It’s true that Sanchez has had only one full season as a starting QB, and that he had only a couple of “signature” games as a starter. He probably could have benefited in many ways from another year of college ball. But, heck, he’s already been at USC for 4 years, and will have his degree this spring. It’s not as if he’s leaving as an underclassman. Had he stayed another year, his academic activities would have been as big a joke as Matt Leinart’s: ballroom dancing, basket-weaving and — in Leinart’s case, anyway — coed impregnation.

True, Peyton Manning got his Bachelor’s in 3 years, and earned a Master’s degree when he stayed for his senior year — so it’s possible to major in more than just “eligibility” in that extra year — but even Manning stayed in school only 4 years. Carson Palmer did stay a 5th year, and benefited mightily, winning a Heisman and going high in the draft, after having been a disappointment and an underachiever the previous 4 years — not necessarily through any fault of his own. But Palmer was a special case. He really needed that 5th year because of the crappy and inconsistent coaching he’d been receiving amidst the turmoil of the pre-Carroll years, which pretty obviously retarded his development.

And in Palmer’s 5th year, he was tutored by Norm Chow, who increased his skills and draft prospects exponentially. Who knows who the Hell would be guiding Sanchez in HIS 5th year? At this moment, it’s not even clear that USC has an offensive coordinator, since its coordinator-designate, who hasn’t yet run a practice on campus, is actually considering a couple of NFL offers.

Even more importantly — far more importantly — there are other high-profile, highly touted QBs around who are also expected to go high in the draft. As it happens, three of them who might have taken money out of Sanchez’s pocket — Colt McCoy, Sam Bradford, and even Tim Tebow — all decided to defer their decision for another year. Had Sanchez waited, who knows where he’d have been selected next year, with all that competition? It’s safe to say that, with fewer high-profile QBs in this year’s draft, he stands a better chance of being picked high and getting a nice little nest-egg.

Sure, solid college QBs like Chase Daniel and Pat White will also be in this year’s draft, but, great as they’ve been in college, they’re both considered small for NFL QBs, and also have skill-sets more associated with college spread offenses than with pro requirements. Sanchez is taller and heavier than those two, and has a bigger arm. Not that I believe size and arm strength are the be-all and end-all for consideration, but scouts and personnel directors do. So, all in all, it sure seems like a smart financial decision for Sanchez, despite Pete Carroll’s hissy fit.

It’s not clear to me that Greg Oden, who had as many personal fouls as boards against the Lakers the last time they played (4 each), and pretty much disgraced himself last night against the less-than-imposing Nets with one stinkin’ rebound to go with 2 points and 1 block, is a bust — yet. But it does seem abundantly evident that he’s not the second coming of Bill Walton in Rip City, either, except in the frequency of his injuries. He’s on a career arc to develop into something better than Kwame Brown or Eddy Curry and worse than, say, Andrew Bogut — a serviceable big man who defends and rebounds adequately, passes adequately out of the post, and has no offensive moves to speak of.

He’s someone who should have a long, decent and remunerative NBA career as long as the knees hold up because, as they say, “you can’t teach tall.” After all, Dan Gadzuric is still in the league, isn’t he? But when a No. 1 draft pick big man isn’t good enough to edge Joel Pryzbilla out of the starting lineup, it’s not unfair to start using the “bust” word before his first season is half over. The Blazers need more rebounding and toughness, and they’re not getting it from Oden.

That’s why I’m intrigued by the rumors that the Blazers, Clippers and Knicks have been talking about a three-way deal that would send Marcus Camby to New York, David Lee to the Blazers, and some forgettable loser to the Clippers.

That last was a bit harsh, I know, but Clipperland is pretty much where every promising career goes to die, or at least to hibernate. Actually, the publicly available information a week or so ago was that the trade would also send former Knick Channing Frye back to the Knicks, and former Clipper Q. Richardson, now a Knick, back to L.A. Q-Rich isn’t a bum, but unless he’s surrounded by Amare Stoudamire, the younger Joe Johnson and the pre-injury Shawn Marion, and being fed by Steve Nash in a frenetically uptempo style, he most certainly is not what the Clippers need. And to give up Camby, flawed and incomplete though his game is, to wind up with Richardson? I rest my case.

If all the Blazers had to give up was Frye, essentially straight-up for Lee, that would be a steal ranking below — but not all that far below — Pau Gasol for his brother, Kwame Brown and J-Crit. Or, maybe more accurately, on the level of B. Cook for Trevor Ariza. Not gonna happen, though — despite concerns about Lee’s potential restricted free agent deal next year impacting any ability to clear space for the LeBron James pipe dream — now that Lee’s exploded on offense with the return of Jared Jeffries to play center, while still averaging over 10 boards a game. Still, Portland can dream, can’t it?

At least this dream is a bit more pleasant than the looming nightmare that Darius Miles might play 2 more NBA games this season, and screw Portland’s cap space for years. I still don’t quite understand how that works. Miles was examined by LEAGUE doctors, and deemed to have a career-ending injury, allowing the Blazers to buy out his albatross of a contract and remove it from their salary cap rolls. Now that other doctors have decided that maybe the injury wasn’t quite so final, and Memphis signed Miles just to screw with Portland, Portland not only is on the hook for a luxury tax payment, in addition to all the money it paid that incompetent coach-killer just to be rid of him? ‘T’ain’t fair, I tell you. Either the Portland management team isn’t as smart as it’s been cracked up to be — would the Spurs ever have wound up in this situation? — or the NBA salary rules need a major overhaul.

Speaking of Frye, given how little he’s contributing to Portland, having previously contributed only marginally more to the Knicks, it’s easy to forget that he was taken 8th in the 2005 draft, 2 spots ahead of Andrew Bynum. Despite Bynum’s lack of consistency, and his distressingly low rebounding totals lately, I don’t think anybody would take Frye over Bynum right now were there a do-over, to put it delicately.

Lakers’ fans love to hate Bynum, whose development is either stalled or retrogressing after tall the pre-injury promise he showed last season. And it’s true, Bynum’s still got a lot of growing up to do, doesn’t always use his size and bulk to best advantage, and keeps making the same irritating mistakes over and over. But would any team in the league rather have Raymond Felton (taken 5th), Martell Webster (6th), Charlie Villanueva (7th), Frye, or Ike Diogu (9th) instead over even the flawed Bynum we see on the court right now? Marvin Williams (2nd)? Toss-up at best.

Heck, although Andrew Bogut, drafted No.1, came into the league more developed, and is at this point a better-rounded center than Bynum, and certainly a better rebounder — though Bynum averages more points and blocks per game — I’d bet that plenty of teams would rather have Bynum than Bogut, all other things being equal.

The only unequivocally “better” draft picks than Bynum in 2005 were Chris Paul (4th) and Deron Williams (3rd). Just in case anybody’s keeping score. The much-derided judgment of The Kupcake/Jim Buss is starting to look better and better.

The intrigue around LaDainian Tomlinson, who may soon be an ex-Charger, gets thicker and juicier, doesn’t it? The Chargers put out word, before the playoff loss to Pittsburgh, that LT was sidelined with a “groin strain.” LT, for his part, has confirmed that it wasn’t just a “strain,” but a far more severe detachment of a tendon that connects one of his muscles to his pubic bone, saying, “If it was a strain I’d be able to play with it, trust me. A lot of guys have strains.” Now that we know what LT’s injury really was, the fact that he played in the Colts’ game at all — and actually managed to rush for a TD before coming out — shows that he’s not a prima donna, sitting out with the proverbial “hangnail.”

I understand why clubs don’t like to publicize the seriousness and extent of their players’ injuries. But it seems to me that if they’re going to play cute, and underplay the seriousness of a player’s injury, it’s only fair that they should have his back, and not leave him to twist slowly, slowly in the wind, as ignorant sports talk show hosts and mouth but underinformed callers bash the injured player as a quitter, a pantywaist, or worse.

Yet, Chargers’ management, never known as “player-friendly” even on its best days, did exactly that: lie about the extent of LT’s injury and allow — even invite — unfair criticism of his ability to play with pain. And not for the first time, either. When LT sat out most of last season’s AFC Championship game against New England with a knee ligament injury so bad that it appeared to linger into this season — so bad that Norv Turner admitted that he knew LT couldn’t have returned — the Chargers persisted in characterizing the problem as a mere “sore knee.”

I’m no great fan of LT, and I certainly have no inside information. But I agree with Petros Papadakis, who’s been there at the college level, that anybody who gets as many carries as LT, game-in, game-out and year-in, year-out, regularly plays with pain and wouldn’t sit out unless the “pain” was abnormally great, or his condition threatened worse injury. He shouldn’t have to prove his toughness to the great unwashed. And he certainly shouldn’t have to do it because his team deliberately and callously underplayed the severity of his injuries. But, as always in pro sports, “loyalty” extends only one way — from players to management — and is rarely reciprocated.

Please send comments and criticism — especially criticism — to thonglaw@sprynet.com, where it will be dealt with appropriately.

Jason Whitlock had another provocative column last week on foxsports.com, headlined “NFL Truths: It’s all about character.” In it, he takes to task organizations that draft, and trade, based solely on perceived talent, and ignore “character” issues. His none-too-surprising conclusion: “The lesson from this entire NFL season is embarrassingly obvious and cliche: Good and bad character are difference-makers.” He hammered at that theme some more on Monday, when he subbed for Jim Rome on KLAC.

There’s obviously some truth to that old saw. Nothing can undermine a coach, or tear apart a locker room, like bad character players — especially bad-character guys whose talent or natural charisma draws teammates to him. But it’s really not that simple.

In the first place, what does “character” mean, anyway? If it means fire in the belly, hard-driving work ethic, will to win, hatred of defeat, tolerance of pain, and on-field smarts, I’ll buy it. The only problems with those qualities, is that a lot of really, really bad people also have them. There are a lot of really tough, fearless, hard-working, never-say-die narcissistic a-holes and sociopaths out there.

Ray Lewis is a tough player and a leader on the field and, presumably, in the locker room. He proved that all season, and certainly didn’t disappoint against the Dolphins last Sunday. Just don’t go to any club where he and his posse are hanging out around Super Bowl time, unless you’re wearing heavy armor. Or at least that’s the advice the two dead guys for whose murder he was arrested several years ago should have heeded.

Lewis ultimately pleaded to lesser charges of obstructing justice, so I guess he’s not a murderer, just a guy who likes to pal around with murderers. But his utter lack of remorse over the murders of two people — a young barber and an aspiring artist not known to be gang-affiliated — and his general attitude throughout that sordid process, strongly suggest that “character” means something different in football than it means in the rest of society.

I hate to pound on Nick Saban again, but whatever excellence he has as a college football coach is counterbalanced by his vile lack of honesty and inability to fulfill his agreements. He’s had a lot of success, despite his own appalling “character.” I’m sure he tells recruits and their parents that “character” is paramount to him, and I’m sure it is. He just doesn’t factor in his own. Not a lot of dry eyes outside the state of Alabama when the “plucky” Utes boatraced his Tide team in the Sugar Bowl.

Also, too, as Sarah Palin likes to say, what about all those high-“character” guys who play on losing teams, or on winning teams that just fall short? If character is the “difference maker,” does that mean that only the winningest winners have it? This is a variation on the penchant of athletes and coaches to credit prayer and the intervention of The Almighty for their victories and successes, which merely begs the question whether they just didn’t pray hard enough before every game they lost, and/or whether their opponents are, by contrast, minions of Beelzebub.

After all, Tony Dungy has been a prayerful man and by all accounts a man who doesn’t just preach, but performs, good works. He’s been an outstanding NFL head coach. Nonetheless, his teams have won a grand total of 1 Super Bowl, while the NFL’s Prince of Darkness, Belichick, of whom more, later, has won 3 as a head coach, and has 2 other rings as the Igor to Bill Parcells’s Dr. Frankenstein. So, Belichick and Parcells have more character than Dungy?

Last Saturday, Dungy’s Colts lost yet another playoff game they coulda’, shoulda’ won. Did he and his players on all those other good teams lack “character” every year but one? Remember, Peyton Manning, the quintessential “high-character” guy has been on Dungy’s Colts for a lot of years. Unfortunately, Manning’s surfeit of “character” doesn’t seem to translate to stellar performances when it’s one-and-done. Indeed, some uncharitable souls, including myself, believe he chokes in big games in the postseason.

Not that he doesn’t burn to win; not that he doesn’t practice and prepare obsessively; not that he’s unwilling to play with pain. He gets high scores on all those “tests” of “character.” He just happens to choke in “money” games. On the other hand, his team this year wouldn’t have had the chance to see him choke, had he not performed at a preternatural level in the regular season.

Heck, the Giants beat the Patriots last Super Bowl, with such “character” guys as Plaxico Burress. Was it simply the case that Burress’s lack of “character” was canceled out by some of the Pats’ own players, like, say, Randy Moss, or was the balance upset by the king of detestable “characters,” Bill Belichick — who, perversely, is renowned for insisting on “high-character” players?

What about the Pats’ Randy Moss, who’s generally regarded as a “high-character” player now? Folks in Oakland and Minnesota, who knew him when, might beg to differ.

Voltaire, I believe, is the one who said that God fights on the side of the big battalions. In football terms, God fights on the side of the teams with the best talent at key positions, the best coaching, the best preparation, the best game plans, the better match-ups, and the fewest key injuries. A “high-character” guy who can’t run, can’t jump, and/or is weaker than his opposite numbers, may or may not be able to compensate for the disparity of talent in certain situations, but a team built solely on “character” and not on the other things that make a football player effective is likely to be left in the dust by the lower-“character” teams with better personnel.

Sure, you can’t predict winners, or successful players, simply by relying on the “measurables.” The Cowboys are Exhibit A for the proposition that boatloads of talent on paper don’t guarantee success on the field. Exhibit B may well be the Redskins, who paid a huge amount for a former Pro Bowl player bitten by the acting bug, Jeremy Taylor, and thereby helped the surprising Miami Dolphins achieve a remarkable comeback, while themselves falling into the pit of unmet expectations. Exhibit C probably is the Jets, who spent and spent and spent in the offseason for proven talent — and not just on Brett Favre, either. They ultimately exited the stage with both a whimper and a bang — the bang being the end of Eric Mangini’s head coaching job, and the whimper, perhaps, the ignominious end to Brett Favre’s career.

Character, shmaracter. Favre had plenty of “character” when he won one Super Bowl, went to another, and almost beat the Giants last postseason, didn’t he? Apparently, he only lost his “character” when he presided over a season-ending losing streak of epic proportions, in which his interception-to-TD ratio looked like Lehman Brothers last financial statement. So, does “character” determine results, or does it only become evident AFTER the returns are in?

It sure looks from my armchair as if Favre proves that “good” and “bad” character can coexist in the same damn player! (It also seems that he was the world’s biggest idiot not to take the Packers up on their offer of $25 Million to stay retired, but that’s a discussion for another time.)

So, while “character” may “count,” the teams that have won, and won consistently, sure seem to have more good players at more positions — and better coaching and management — than the teams that failed. Call me naïve.

It stinks big-time that a team that finished with an 11-5 record is out of the NFL playoffs, while two 8-8 teams (both of which won last weekend, incidentally) and one 9-7 outfit got in. But when the 11-5 team is the New England Patriots, coached by Bill Belichick, it’s just chickens come home to roost. Who, other than a “chowderhead,” could possibly be unhappy that the Pats got screwed?

Still, the Pats’ record this year may have been Belichick’s best-ever coaching job. The guy has some skills, no doubt. It’s just that his general schmuckiness tends to overshadow them.

And, getting back to the “character” issue, is it fair for all the high-character players on that team to suffer due to the karmic payback that Belichick invited? Was it fair that the sailors on the boat where Jonah stowed himself just before being swallowed by the “great fish” almost died because Jonah had seriously pissed off God?

We hear all the time that if your number’s up, it’s up, and that’s all well and good. But what if the number that’s up happens to belong to the guy standing next to you, and you’re just “collateral damage”? Anyone remember the poor guy in Monty Python’s “The Meaning of Life” who DIDN’T eat the salmon mousse, but wound up in the afterlife anyway, along with all the ones who did? So, Mr. Whitlock, one “bad-character” player is enough to ruin the fate of multiple good-character teammates?

I see where Bill Simmons, outstanding sportswriter and raconteur, and irrationally biased Celtics-lover and Lakers-hater (although the latter is virtually a given if the former is true) has written off the Christmas Day Lakers’ win over the Green Machine as essentially meaningless. I have to take issue with the reasoning that got him there. I mean, come ON, blaming the refs for the outcome because they gave the Lakers a 15-8 advantage in free throws — ZERO to Kobe, who deserved a few — while whitewashing the pro-Celtics free throw disparity in last season’s Finals?

But I have to agree with his conclusion. 92-83, at home, in a regular-season game on Christmas Day 2008 is “redemption” for losing last year’s Finals in 6 games, losing Game 4 at home despite an 18-point halftime lead, and losing Game 6 on the road by a deceptively CLOSE 40 points like — well, I have not idea like what. Nice that the Lakers won the game, but there’s no comparability or proportionality.

I remember sometime site contributor Damon Baldwin, an unrelentingly enthusiastic Raiders fan, taking me to task for daring to suggest that the Raiders’ regular-season win over the Pats the season after that heartbreaking, highway-robbery “Tuck” Rule playoff loss in Tom Brady’s first Super Bowl season didn’t quite even the score. I was perhaps a trifle more rudely dismissive of his Rai-duhs than I should have been — they were a pretty good team, back then — but I remain unrepentant about the conclusion.

Not that the regular-season win wasn’t welcome and important in its own right. But, unless it’s the win that knocks the hated rival out of a postseason berth, or gets team seeking “revenge” into the postseason, NO regular-season win properly compensates for a devastating playoff loss that prevents a team from going to a Super Bowl — as the Raiders might well have done had the refs not blown that “tuck” call. And I’m in surprising solidarity with Simmons that the Lakers’ Xmas Day win, heartening and welcome as it was, doesn’t begin to compensate for what the Celts did to the Lakers — and what the Lakers did to themselves — in last year’s Finals.

I’m writing this after the Texas-Ohio State Fiesta Bowl game and before Florida plays Oklahoma for the mythical “National Championship.” But even if Oklahoma beats Florida, I don’t think my conclusion is likely to change. The game was exciting, in its own way — or at least the finish, aided by a questionable call, was exciting. But based on what I saw last night, neither team was likely to beat USC on a neutral field.

In fact, we already know that Ohio State couldn’t beat USC at the L.A. Coliseum, with Beanie Wells unable to play. The final score might have been a bit less embarrassing to Ohio State had they played the game in Columbus with a full complement of players. But nobody who saw that game could doubt that Ohio State would have emerged the loser, wherever or whenever the game was played. Well, who knows what might have happened had the game been played on frozen tundra with a wind-chill of -30 degrees, but otherwise, case closed.

Colt McCoy said that Ohio State’s defense, which the Trojans went through, in Patton’s immortal phrase, “like crap through a goose,” was the best one the Longhorns had faced all season. He may have just been trying to be “politically correct,” to justify the close score and his own offense’s struggles in the game, but I suspect he was telling the truth. If so, that pretty much confirms what our own Jon Castro has been saying for a while: they play mediocre defense in the Big 12, so the top teams’ vaunted offensive statistics are inflated.

Assuming that Florida beats Oklahoma, as I expect, the question then arises whether the SEC, as Jon also contends, is overrated. The fact that Florida lost at home by a single point to Ole Miss does suggest that BOTH the top team in the SEC, and the top team in the Pac-10, which lost an away game it really had no business losing, have some warts.

But it’s not clear to me that Florida’s one-point home loss to Mississippi is substantially worse than USC’s loss in Corvallis. It turns out that both Ole Miss and Oregon State (when it had its top rusher healthy) were much better teams this year than anyone thought they’d be. Mississippi had 4 losses, true, and the losses at home to South Carolina and Vanderbilt were particularly embarrassing. And, frankly, their 23-21 away win over Arkansas, which lost to Texas (in Austin) 52-10 (but “held” Florida, in Fayetteville, to a “mere” 38 points), doesn’t give me a lot of reassurance.

Still, they did kick ass at LSU, barely lost at Alabama, and pummeled Texas Tech in their bowl game. Of course, Texas Tech had been leading a charmed life for most of the season, and they do come from the no-defense conference, but all in all, Mississippi was a lot better this season than they’d been at any time since Eli Manning left.

Certainly, what Utah did to Alabama is some evidence in favor of the “overrated league” conclusion. But Utah and other WAC teams also beat the Pac-10 teams they faced — except for Arizona’s bowl game win over BYU. Heck, Utah beat Oregon State (barely, and playing in Utah, but still . . . ), which beat USC. Does that make USC overrated? Or the WAC, which lost 3 of 5 bowl games — with the non-Utah win being a squeaker by Colorado State over an unimpressive Fresno State squad — underrated?

The point is that comparisons based on anything other than actual on-field competition, while fun, are impossible. As Colin Cowherd suggests, in the absence of any playoff system, bowl games are basically beauty contests. I happen to agree that the USC team of November, December and January deserved a chance to play some team other than Penn State in a bowl game, and, had it received that opportunity, would have more than held its own against any of the teams ranked above it. But we’ll never know.

We’ll especially not know because Oregon State lost to Oregon at the end of the season, dooming USC to yet another Rose Bowl. So, the real villain in this whole melodrama is Oregon State, which early in the season deprived USC of a chance to play for the national championship, and late in the season deprived USC of a chance to prove definitively that the Big 12’s offenses couldn’t beat its defense — or, for that matter, that the Big 12’s defenses would be as capable of stopping SC’s offense as the Maginot Line was of halting the German invasion in WWI.

Every time I see a running back who’s smaller than conventional wisdom says running backs should be, dominate at the NFL level, I have to wonder why the conventional wisdom got to be, well, “conventional.” The latest example is Darren Sproles, listed at 5’6” and 181 pounds, who merely accounted for 328 all-purpose yards and the game-winning TD in the Chargers’ “upset” of the Colts last Sunday. (I out “upset” in quotation marks because, really, is any victory over the Colts in a playoff game ever a true “upset”?) Heck, Ladainian Tomlinson himself is only 5’10”.

The great Jim Brown, the gold standard of running backs, for my money, is 6’2”. Eric Dickerson is 6’3”. Marcus Allen, who’d have challenged for the all-time mark had Al Davis not hated him so, was 6’1”, as was O.J. Simpson. Franco Harris was 6’2”. But a lot of the great running backs have been under 6 feet — some considerably under. Here are just a few: Earl Campbell – 5’11”; Terrell Davis – 5’11”; Emmitt Smith – 5’9”; Tony Dorsett – 5’11”; Walter Payton – 5’10”; Thurman Thomas – 5’10”; Barry Sanders – all of 5’8”.

The point isn’t that “smaller” running backs are better or more effective — although one theory of why USC lost to Oregon State was that the small stature of Jacquizz Rodgers, who’s listed at 5’6” and torched the Trojans’ defense for 186 rushing yards, enabled him to hide from the linebackers until after he’d hit the hole. The point is, instead, that NFL teams shouldn’t be afraid to draft, or play, a running back just because he’s a little shorter than what the computer says he should be.

And don’t even get me started about the NFL’s obsession that QBs should be 6’2” or above. It’s a self-fulfilling prophecy, because QBs who are shorter than that generally aren’t drafted — at least, not to play quarterback. But I’ve never bought the rationales advanced for such height discrimination.

One rationale that I love is that shorter QBs won’t be able to see over oncoming rushers, or their own blockers. Sounds plausible, until you realize that in order to see “over” linemen who are well over 6 feet tall themselves, a QB would have to be 7 feet tall or so himself. Who’s the last 7-foot QB who played in the NFL? He hasn’t been born yet. As far as I can tell, QB’s, no matter what their height, “see” through the gaps between players, not over their heads. But everyone still repeats this old saw as if it had been handed down from God on Mt. Sinai.

So ingrained is this belief that coaches willfully refuse to change it even when events on the field prove them wrong. A case in point, I will maintain until my (hopefully, far-off) dying day, is the way Doug Flutie was treated when he came into the league. He wasn’t drafted high coming out of college — mainly because he’s 5’9” in shoes with heels — but performed pretty well for a couple of USFL seasons.

I can understand why the first NFL team for which he suited up, the 1986 Bears team a year removed from Super Bowl success, didn’t give him much of a shot and then dumped him. Jim McMahon hated Flutie from the git-go because the Bears had jettisoned McMahon’s best friend on the team to open a spot for Flutie; the other QBs, who in fairness were awful, treated the addition of Flutie as an implicit affront to their own abilities; and, let’s face it, Flutie didn’t do all that well, to put it charitably, when he was thrown in against a good Redskins team in that season’s playoffs.

But I think that the Patriots, with whom he signed after that season — or, perhaps more accurately, Raymond Berry, an all-time great pass-catcher but a so-so coach — really hosed him. Some say it was because he crossed the picket lines in the 1987 strike. He did, after all, QB the team to a 21-7 win against the Oilers in the last “replacement” game before the strike was officially settled. All I know is that he outplayed both Tony Eason and Steve “Touchless” Grogan whenever Berry had to, grudgingly, put him on the field, but that those two always got the benefits of any doubts — and there were many doubts.

Flutie led the Pats to a come-from-behind win off the bench in Game 5 of the next season, and was the QB, mainly because of injuries to the more favored passers, for the next 9 games. He won 7 of them. With the team needing just one win in its last 2 games to make the playoffs, Berry benched Flutie, inserted Eason — who basically hadn’t played all season — and the Pats missed the playoffs when Eason couldn’t get the job done. Flutie may not have had the most prepossessing stats around, but he did go 9-4 as a starter for the Patriots.

And, oh, yeah, in 1998, after the Bills started 1-3, he was allowed to be the Bills’ starting QB when Rob Johnson, a USC alum, was injured in the fifth game. All he did in his first start was pass for 2 TDs and lead a 4th-Quarter comeback against the Colts. The next week, he scored the winning TD against the Jaguars on a naked bootleg just as time expired. All told, he was 8-3 as a starter that season, made the Pro Bowl, and led the team into the playoffs, where Miami beat them.

The following season, he “merely” led the Bills to a 10-5 record. His reward was to have Coach Wade Phillips (‘nuff said) decide that the Bills really, really needed bigger, far less mobile, and consistent loser Rob Johnson under center. Showing his usual lack of acumen, Phillips benched Flutie for the last regular-season game, and for the playoff game against the Titans, and relegated Flutie to the bench for the next season.

I can’t blame Johnson for the bizarre “Music City Miracle” ending of that game — some Flutie enthusiasts suggest it was karmic payback for Phillips’s brain-dead personnel decision — but I’ve always believed that Flutie’s mobility and resourcefulness would have had the Bills ahead by enough that no miracle ending would be possible.

Thus was born the infamous “Curse of Doug Flutie” that has (deservedly) dogged Wade Phillips ever since. Just as a side-note, Phillips refused to learn from his mistakes, and kept Flutie’s posterior on the pines the next season, allowing him into games only after the outcome had been determined, or when Johnson was injured — which wasn’t exactly an uncommon occurrence.

For the record, the Bills finished the 2000 season 8-8, and have never even approached 10 wins in a season since that fateful benching. In fact, they haven’t even made the playoffs. Also just for the record, Phillips doggedly stuck with Johnson as he went 4-7, and only put Flutie in after Johnson went down. Doing the arithmetic, Flutie led the team to a 4-1 record in the games HE started. But Phillips made the correct decision, because Johnson had a better NFL body, right? NOT.

Flutie’s final F.U. to the organization — a bittersweet reminder of what could have been had they kept faith with him — occurred in the final game of that season, when he led the Bills to a 42-23 win over the Seahawks on the strength of 20 of 25 pass completions (80%) for 366 yards, 14.6 yards per attempt, 3 TDs, 0 interceptions, and a perfect 158.3 passer rating. As far as I’m aware, no Buffalo QB has had a better game since that one.

Am I suggesting that Flutie was a Hall of Famer in the making unjustly denied greatness by the blinkered prejudices of the coaching fraternity? Of course not. He never would have been a Joe Montana, John Elway, Tom Brady, Peyton Manning, Steve Young, Troy Aikman, or even a Dan Marino or Jim Kelly.

But there are plenty of NFL QBs who also would never be confused with the above luminaries, who’ve had a lot more support from their organizations, and who’ve produced a lot less than Flutie did when he got his chances. Heck, Super Bowls have been won by the likes of Trent Dilfer, Brad Johnson, and Mark Rypien, who also never reminded anyone of the aforementioned greats. Indeed, Jim McMahon, Flutie’s tormentor in Chicago, wasn’t all that great himself, winning his only Super Bowl mainly because of the team’s monster defense.

So I certainly do think that Flutie could have had a nice little career as a starter, winning more games than he lost, with some reasonable playoff success, had he been given a fair shot. When circumstances forced coaches to play him, he won games. Despite winning, he was nonetheless benched by those coaches as soon as they could conjure up excuses to do so, and kept there even as his replacements kept losing games. And I believe that the main reason he was never given a fair shot is because coaches everywhere are so mesmerized by numbers like height, weight, etc., that they could never accept the possibility that a smaller-than-normal QB could lead a team, even when the results prove otherwise.

The prejudice applies beyond height issues. Joe Montana is 6’2” and Tom Brady is 6’4”. Yet, would Montana have been Montana (or, for that matter, would Jerry Rice have been Jerry Rice) in any system other than the Niners’, under any coach but Walsh or one of his epigones? Would Brady have become Brady under any coach but Belichick? Remember, neither was particularly well-regarded coming out of college. Montana, “Comeback Kid” though he’d been at Notre Dame, wasn’t considered real pro material, and didn’t go until Walsh took him late in the Third Round. Not only did Brady last until the 199th pick, because no one thought he’d be any good, but the Pats actually drafted two other players AHEAD of him in Round 6!

It’s easy, in hindsight, to suggest that they’d have risen to the top in any system. But the reality is that there are a lot of inflexible, unimaginative — okay, stupid and pigheaded — personnel people in the NFL unable or unwilling to look outside their specifications lists, and even more coaches unable or unwilling to accommodate different talents. Would Montana have even started, let alone lasted in the league, had, say, the aforementioned Wade Phillips been his coach? Would Brady have ever had the chance to impregnate one super model and become engaged to another, had he gone to Dallas, or Kansa City, or . . . well, you get the idea.

Please send comments and criticism — especially criticism — to thonglaw@sprynet.com, where it will be dealt with appropriately.