One reality of the post-millennial NFL is a bunch of rosters filled with orphan socks, spare parts and forgotten $20 bills found in corduroy sportcoats.

The salary cap makes it impossible to load up, and even if you’re the Rams you’re no more than a couple of weak ligaments away from walking off the field shaking your head at what should have been. One year it’s the Giants in the Super Bowl, the next it’s the Bears and Patriots not only winning their divisions but getting to spend Wild Card weekend shuffling from the fridge to the couch.

This is a lengthy lead-in to today’s seminar -- "Coaches, And Our Newfound Obsession With Them." It says here those rosters and their one-man deep depth charts have a lot to do with the current upheaval in the NFL coaching ranks.

If Marty Schottenheimer couldn’t Scare ‘N Dare his Redskins into the playoffs, then Daniel Snyder might as well see if Steve Spurrier can Fun ‘N Gun them there. If Tony Dungy can’t match his defense with a comparable offense, maybe Bill Parcells can.

In other words, what you can’t do with a roster you can always do with a coach. Remember, however, that it wasn’t that long ago that Bill Cowher was one of the dopey guys who didn’t know what he was doing. Seems he’s traveled the dope-genius trail more than once.

Impatient owners and GMs of borderline or bad teams have one job: Find someone who can do a lot with a little, or at least do more than the last guy.

(Who knows what Spurrier’s going to do in Washington, but give him credit for this much: He says he’s not going to be one of those guys who works 20 hours a day and sleeps on a couch in the office. Those 20-hour guys have always been kind of creepy, like old men who sleep on cots in the basement to stay close to their model-train collections.)

Coaches are heroes again, back atop the food chain. Welcome to 2002, the year of the uber-coach.

This Week’s List:

A distinct, unnerving possibility: Brian Billick, laughing last.

Architecture today: If you have the choice of what to name your college basketball arena, be sure to include the words "field house."

One thing we’ve been saying for years: There’s nothing in sports more annoying than a sports talk-show host with a slight but audible nose whistle.

Since so many people took such righteous offense at last week’s slightly less-than scientific look at the NFL playoffs, some hard-core football is in order: This week, bet against the bad/unproven quarterbacks, which means go with the Raiders and Eagles, bet the over on Pack-Rams and the under on Ravens-Steelers.

And if you bet actual money based on that information: You are entered into a contest to win an all-expense paid trip inside Darrell Russell’s brain.

What we know about Russell, in three parts: 1) his first encounter with the NFL drug policy came about because of second-hand pot smoke; 2) the second was a result of a missed drug test nobody told him about, and; 3) the third was the old somebody-spiked-my-drink-with-Ecstasy-in-a-club deal.

Where those incidents occurred: Ruby Ridge, Waco and the Texas Book Depository.

When he received the trophy, he was surprised to find it curled into the fetal position: Michael Strahan, defensive player of the year.

We’ll just wait and see how he closes before we get too excited: Golfer Heath Slocum, in the running at the Bob Hope Classic.

Words we mistakenly thought had been relegated to memory: Slant to Rice …

Just for the heck of it: Ernie (Arrowhead) Holmes, and the helicopter.

An assumption that’s probably wrong but still hard to shake: Duke basketball fans are just Raider fans with bigger trust funds.

Voodoo economics tip of the week: The Golden State Warriors raised ticket prices 5 percent last week.

And so, you ask, what do you get for your money?: Well, on Tuesday it was an unwatchable loss to the utterly unwatchable Miami Heat.

In other words: You’d be better served spending $70 to watch Mark Cuban make a Slobbery Brownie Delight while singing "People Who Need People."

How to tell the difference between "best player" and "best friend": Terrell Owens has a San Francisco Chronicle article titled "Mariucci Fires Back At Owens" taped to the inside of his locker, with the most inflammatory fire-back quotes ("…devoid of any deep thought") highlighted in Soc 103 yellow.

A reader from New Rochelle, N.Y., commenting on Jet John Abraham’s untimely illness last week, writes: "Every psychotic Raider fan with money on the game knew Abraham’s potential for impacting the game. Abraham’s mystery illness was somehow connected to the confluence of Biker Gangs, Drugs Labs and Vegas Books."

And finally, the first installment of Enrich Your Vocabulary, intended to accompany tape-delayed telecasts of obscure sporting events you really don’t care about to begin with: Salchow (sal-kou), n. A move in figure skating in which the skater jumps from one skate, completes a full rotation, and lands on the other skate.

Tim Keown is a senior writer for ESPN The Magazine. E-mail him at tim.keown@espnmag.com.