Cowboy rides off into sunset

Bill Parcells was finally relaxed. He was packing boxes, taking down pictures, shaking hands, saying his goodbyes. Yet until the end of the week, he was still technically the coach of the Cowboys, so he was still working.

"I just got done talking with [new offensive coordinator Jason] Garrett," Parcells said last week. "I'm busier now than I was during the season."

That's not quite true, but the point is clear: As long as Parcells has an office, work will get done in it. Football work. That's why those days ended last week, at least for a while, and he is on his way to his new home in Saratoga Springs, N.Y., not far from what he calls "the most beautiful racetrack in the world." After he settles in, he'll head to Lake Placid for a few days because, he said, "I've never seen the place in winter. I want to just hang around."

Then he'll head to his winter home in Jupiter, Fla., for mornings of sharing golf and lies with his buddies and afternoons watching spring training with his longtime friend, St. Louis Cardinals manager Tony La Russa. He'll be doing that instead of spending his waking hours watching combine workouts at the RCA Dome in Indianapolis or studying video of young college players who may or may not be available when the college draft rolls around in the spring.

"I haven't talked to anybody about anything, but I'll do something," Parcells said. "I'm not a sit-around-the-house guy. I told La Russa I'll be his bullpen coach. Just sit there, and if he wants a lefty, I'll tell the guy to warm up."

At 65, Parcells is stepping into a new life but not necessarily one devoid of football. Already there are rumors that he'll end up back in television as an NFL analyst or commentator, a logical jump he's made before. One possible place is the "Monday Night Football" booth, if ESPN can persuade him to do it. Another rumor swirls about a return to the Jets as a consultant to his former disciple, general manager Mike Tannenbaum, and head coach Eric Mangini, who said last year that Parcells was among the most helpful colleagues to him when he first left the Patriots.

Whatever the case, Parcells will do something. It just won't involve the grind that the life of an NFL head coach has become. After 19 years of that, it is time to step off the carousel and look at Lake Placid in winter and Saratoga in August.

"Physically, I can still do it," Parcells said, "but mentally? No. I still love the coaching part, but the rest of it is a grind. If you've been doing this a long time, it can get to you. Not to the first-year guy or the second-year guy, but if you've been doing it for a long time, that pressure can become a little bit stressful."

What are most stressful, and most deflating, are losses like the one that may have been his final one, a playoff defeat in which his Cowboys were beaten in Seattle, 21-20, because his quarterback dropped a shiny new football on the snap of a field goal try.

"It gets to the point where the wins are a relief and the losses . . ." Parcells's voice drifted off to a place only old coaches would understand.

One of them, former Boston College baseball coach Eddie Pellagrini, who died last October, spoke to Parcells about that once, and Parcells remembered the words in the weeks after that final loss as he pondered his coaching future.

"I was up at BC visiting [ex-football coach Dan] Henning," said Parcells, "and Eddie came over and said, 'Coach, it doesn't matter what the media says or your friends say. The game will tell you what you are.' I never forgot that. That helped me. 'The game will tell you what you are.' That's pretty good."

What the game should tell the sports world is that Parcells is a Hall of Fame coach, and not simply because he won two Super Bowls with the Giants and led the Patriots to a third in 1996. It should tell them that he led four teams to the playoffs, and all were better off when he left than when he arrived.

The Giants had gone 46-96-1 over the previous decade when Parcells took over in 1983. By the time he left a decade later, they'd gone 77-49 under him, gone to the playoffs five times, and won two Super Bowls. He inherited a similar train wreck in New England, a team that had gone 14-50 the previous four years. In four years, he had the Patriots in the Super Bowl and left with a 32-32 record and two playoff visits.

The Jets were 40-88 the previous eight years before Parcells began coaching them in 1997 and an abysmal 10-38 in the last three before his arrival. In three years, he went 29-19 and got them to the AFC Championship game.

As for the Cowboys, people who complain that he never won a playoff game in four years must be forgetting that the team was coming off three straight 5-11 seasons when he arrived. He left two games over .500 (34-32) with two trips to the playoffs and critics now complaining only that the Cowboys hadn't gone farther in the postseason.

"Who's been luckier than me?" Parcells said. "I had 19 years with a lot of great players and coaches. I made a lot of friends. Maybe 95 percent of my players I have a good relationship with and I'm thankful for that. It's just time. I'm happy to have been around this long."

Football should be just as thankful for having him this long.

"He's meant so much," said Bears coach Lovie Smith, "not just to the Cowboys and the Giants and the Patriots and the Jets, teams that he coached, but for the National Football League in general."

Now it's time to take a walk and see what else the world holds in the fall, when the leaves are turning and football is being played without him.

It's still a splitting headache

The committee studying revenue sharing finally met in New York last Tuesday and there is a conference call scheduled for tomorrow. That is supposed to be the day the big-market teams have to decide whether to agree to meaningful sharing of local revenues.

Right now, the teams that spend more than 65 percent of their revenue on player costs are supposed to get revenue sharing, but the big-market teams want to include "qualifiers" that would limit that sharing. The big-market teams feel some smaller-market teams are not charging enough for tickets or maximizing other revenue streams. But if the big-market teams don't agree to cut down on the qualifiers, the battle will continue, and it won't be pretty because now the middle-market teams are getting involved.

The league estimate is that 18 teams spent 65 percent or more of their revenue on players in 2006. Since 65 percent is usually the break-even point, that would seem to mean that 18 teams probably broke even or lost money last year, at least on paper. But now that the middle class may be feeling the pinch, it should put more pressure on big-market teams such as the Patriots, Cowboys, and Broncos to compromise.

If no deal is struck tomorrow, revenue sharing is likely to become the main topic at the owners meetings in March and may have harsh consequences for the future of the CBA and the relationships among NFL owners. Hanging over all the heads in this battle between filthy-rich guys and obscenely filthy-rich guys is Nov. 8, 2008, the day the owners must decide whether to opt out of the current CBA and face a labor action. It takes only nine no votes to opt out.

One example of the problems between different markets was illustrated in a story in the Palm Beach Post last week. It said four club seats to the Dolphins that used to cost $9,600 a year will now cost $20,000, including parking. That's about $500 a game. Ask Ralph Wilson to charge that in Buffalo and see what he gets.

The Bills just announced their largest ticket-price increase in 17 years, raising the average ticket at Ralph Wilson Stadium 12.5 percent, from $41.29 to $46.45. The Bills had the lowest average ticket price in the NFL in 2006, and even with the increase will still have the least-expensive tickets in the league.

Indianapolis is at the high end of the league for sideline-seat prices, at $179 a game. New England's average is now $135 a game. The Patriots also sell standing-room tickets for $49 a game. NFL average prices do not include personal-seat licenses, added charges some teams impose for the right to buy season tickets.

"Getting revenue sharing set is our biggest focus," said Patriots owner Robert Kraft. "It's very important for the future of the NFL. We've got to find a way to balance incentives with revenue sharing. Most competitive owners understand the strength of the NFL is the balance and the parity, but we've got to be awful careful with this revenue sharing that we don't take away the incentive to work.

"Why call it 'Ralph Wilson Stadium'? He could get $6 million of additional local revenue for selling naming rights. I do think Buffalo has done a good job, but there are a lot of guys with very low ticket prices. The perfect example is Green Bay -- a city of 100,000 people, and it's in the top quadrant in revenue and profitability in our league. Kansas City is another example of a terrific small market.

"We all agree on the importance of revenue sharing to maintain competition but not to just have wealth transfer."

While discussing revenue sharing several weeks ago, Wilson said, "I don't think Bob Kraft and I agree on anything. It's not Pete Rozelle's league anymore. It's not the league he built.

"I don't know what the future is for the Bills. We'll do the best we can for as long as we can, but some of these guys don't want to share, and that's what the strength of the NFL has always been over these other leagues."

NFL has a world to conquer

The decision by NFL owners to play at least one and sometimes two regular-season games overseas beginning next year in London is, like most of their decisions, based on business, not football. While pro football remains the hottest sport in America, commissioner Roger Goodell understands that expanding the game's financial reach requires an expanded fan base at a time when there is minimal room for growth in the US.

"We've pretty much tapped out most revenue streams," said Patriots owner Robert Kraft, whose team will be part of an ambitious preseason game in China next August. "We play the most competitive game on the planet. We need to let the rest of the world see it. In this age of technology, there are no borders. China is looking for Americana."

And the NFL is looking for yuans. And Euros. And rands and pesos and the kind of international marketing presence the NBA has developed. While the NBA's popularity seems to have peaked in the US, it is growing

overseas. Now the NFL wants the latter without risking the former. That's one reason it will be careful about which teams to send overseas because any loss in gate receipts will be made up by the league, a fact that makes it unlikely that the Patriots would lose a regular-season home game soon.

"The league has to make up the gate," Kraft said. "I think a lot of the teams volunteering to go will do better financially [than they would at home]. It would be very expensive for the league to take a team like us on a game like that, however, so if we were chosen, it would be as a visiting team. But I think China buys us a pass for a few years."

To help drum up interest in the Patriots-Seahawks game in Beijing, each team will use a Chinese kicker. Details of how to train them and get them into the game are being worked out.

Etc.

Water, water everywhere
What is going on at Jack Del Rio's house in Jacksonville? Folio, a weekly alternative paper in Jacksonville, ran an article on the 15 biggest water hogs in Jacksonville, and No. 5 was the Jaguars coach, who used 1.7 million gallons of water for the fiscal year ending Sept. 30, 2006. The bill was $6,219. That's enough water for five families of four to use the bathroom three times a day for 15 years. The average customer used 72,000 gallons.

What you talkin' 'bout, Willis?

Not helping the situation in Buffalo is a recent Penthouse magazine interview with Bills running back Willis McGahee, who advocated that a team be added to the NFL in Toronto and the Bills be moved out of Buffalo. McGahee's agent, Drew Rosenhaus, issued a press release "clarifying" McGahee's remarks and claiming the former University of Miami star loves it in Buffalo. Sure he does. McGahee is seeking a contract extension from the Bills after slipping to 23d in the NFL in rushing in 2006. He was 10th in 2005, a season in which he declared he was the best running back in football.

Tait sets the record straight
As things turned out, Bears left tackle John Tait made the right decision when he opted to stay in Chicago rather than sign with the Dolphins two years ago. Miami had targeted Tait as its top free agent priority but couldn't get him despite being willing to match Chicago's offer of a $14 million signing bonus. In fact, Tait would have made more money by signing with the Dolphins because there is no state income tax in Florida. At the time, Tait's agent said his client felt more comfortable in Chicago. Some believed Tait's choice was influenced by his wife immediately souring on South Florida while being given a tour by the wife of then-coach Dave Wannstedt. Some Dolphins employees also believed the Taits felt South Florida wasn't a good fit with their Mormon beliefs. "I don't know where that come from," Tait said last week. "I've heard rumors we went down there and I didn't like palm trees and my wife didn't like it and didn't feel it was a place to raise our family. That wasn't true at all. No matter what people say, the biggest deciding factor was coming in on the ground floor with [Bears coach] Lovie Smith. He was entering his first season, and Wannstedt, I just had the feeling that maybe if he had another bad season he'd be gone. And that's what happened."

Old friend Corwin Brown left the Jets last week to take the defensive coordinator's job at Notre Dame. Brown, the scrappy former Patriots defensive back, has been on the coaching track since he was a player under Bill Parcells in New England.

The Bears are getting their money's worth out of Smith. He will go to the Super Bowl as the lowest-paid coach in the league at $1.35 million, nearly a quarter of what some of the top coaches like Bill Belichick made this season. Negotiations with the team about an extension have been cut off by Smith and his agent, Frank Bauer, and won't resume until after the Super Bowl. The Bears refused to extend Smith a year ago after he was named NFL Coach of the Year, saying they needed to "see another year." Bobby Petrino just got hired in Atlanta for $4.5 million, so Smith will cost the Bears a lot more than he would have a year ago.

If you're thinking about wide receiver help for the Patriots, one guy likely to be available is the Eagles' Donté Stallworth. He averaged 19.1 yards per catch this season, although he was often plagued with nagging injuries. The Eagles will enter the free agency signing period with just $12.4 million in salary cap room, and they are not inclined to break the bank to pay Stallworth, preferring to go with a corps of young receivers that includes Reggie Brown, Hank Baskett, Greg Lewis, Jason Avant, and Jeremy Bloom . Brown had another solid season (46 receptions, 8 TDs, 17.7 yards per catch) but is seen by most scouts as a No. 2 receiver. Baskett, Lewis, and Avant combined for just 53 catches, and Bloom, a fifth-round rookie who hasn't played football in four years because of his obligations with the US Ski Team, spent the season on injured reserve.

Speaking of the Eagles, they moved one of the top special teams coaches in football, John Harbaugh, to secondary coach, at his request. The job was becoming a dead end for the 44-year-old assistant, who aspires to be an NFL or college head coach. He and Eagles head coach Andy Reid agreed that his best chance was to take a step down for now and be a position coach. Harbaugh had interest in the Syracuse job two years ago but couldn't even get an interview for the opening, which eventually was filled by former NFL defensive assistant Greg Robinson.

Fletcher Smith, agent for quarterback Donovan McNabb, is hot about media and Internet reports that his client is upset with the Eagles because they didn't allow him to travel with the team in the playoffs because he was on injured reserve. "None of these stories quoted Donovan," Smith said. "They're all quoting sources close to Donovan. They claim to know what he thinks and what he's feeling. Who are these people? I don't know. I think there should be some level of responsibility in getting his side of the story before printing some of this stuff. It's sensationalism, and I guess it sells newspapers."

Ron Borges's e-mail address is borges@globe.com; material from personal interviews, wire services, other beat writers, and league and team sources was used in this report.