Not-So-Happy Medium Rules

On the Web site www.despair.com, which is not the official home of the Cincinnati Bengal Fan Club, they sell a beautiful full-color lithograph of the Leaning Tower of Pisa in all its ill-conceived glory.

Beneath the tower is an inscription:

MEDIOCRITY

It Takes A Lot Less Time And Most People Won’t Notice The Difference Until It’s Too Late

At last! A perfectly acceptable marketing slogan for the new NFL!

Mediocrity rules!

Mediocrity sells!

Mediocrity wins Super Bowls!

Take a look at this morning’s NFL standings. Seven teams are 5-4. Eight are 4-5. Two, Atlanta and Pittsburgh, are 5-3-1 because they played last Sunday to a tie, the most mediocre of all results, because of mediocre special teams play (Pittsburgh had an extra-point attempt and a field-goal attempt blocked), mediocre officiating (Plaxico Burress put the ball on the ground and spun it like a bottle and the officials ruled he hadn’t fumbled) and mediocre coaching (Bill Cowher spent the entire extra period coaching not to lose, and that’s precisely what his Steelers did, 34-34).

All 32 NFL teams have played nine games. Seventeen of them -- more than half the league -- have either won five games or lost five games.

Remember home-field advantage? In the new NFL, there is none. Through this season’s first 10 weeks, home teams have won only 53% of the time.

Remember dynasties? When one or two teams used to dominate the league for years on end? In the new NFL, dynasties barely last a month.

Oakland had a good one. Back in September. The Raiders were 4-0. They were the scourge of the league. Al Davis had regained his genius stripes, having made the bold, visionary move to get rid of Jon Gruden, who was obviously a red-faced flash in the pan, as his season-opening loss to New Orleans conclusively proved.

Commemorative coffee table books were being planned. “Sept. 8-Oct. 6: Minutes We Will Never Forget.”

Then, the Raiders went 0-4 before winning last Monday and are now just another number among the 5-4-or-4-5 masses.

Parity used to be the buzzword around the NFL, but parity implies equality, as in “All men are created equal,” which sounds noble and desirable and certainly something worth striving for.

Mediocrity is more to the point. Mediocrity, the essence of being moderate in quality. Of being ordinary. Of being so-so. Better than lousy, less than good, stuck in the middle with you.

Parity, in its NFL context, is a state achieved via artificial means, such as the league’s infamous weighted schedule, which rewards bad teams for their badness by giving them easier schedules. For years, it was the great NFL swindle -- league officials winking and patting each other on the back for fooling millions of fans into believing their awful teams were not really so awful on any given Sunday.

The media went along with it because, hey, lots of the games are close and so are the playoff races and as long as we get a credible champion in the end -- San Francisco or Denver or Green Bay -- what’s the harm in having a little fun along the way?

Then St. Louis and Tennessee reached the Super Bowl in the same year. The Rams, 4-12 the previous season, won it. Red flags went up. Eyebrows too. If Georgia Frontiere can tiptoe to the top of the league, might there be something amiss within the league?

Since then, if you can judge a league by its champion, mediocrity has swamped the NFL.

Baltimore won the Super Bowl with half a team -- a formidable but fragile defense saddled with a pull date of January 2002 and a just-don’t-do-anything-to-gum-it-up offense -- which left us with the indelible image of Trent Dilfer, poster boy for the New Mediocrity, hoisting the Vince Lombardi Trophy after beating Kerry Collins’ New York Giants, the most mediocre NFC champion in memory.

New England won the Super Bowl despite three mediocre months (the Patriots were 5-5 heading into Thanksgiving) and a mediocre offense (the Patriots scored three offensive touchdowns during the postseason) because it capitalized on mediocre officiating in the divisional playoffs (the “tuck rule”), mediocre quarterbacking in the AFC final (Kordell Stewart) and a mediocre game plan by Ram Coach Mike Martz (Marshall Faulk as decoy) in the big game.

Now we are nine games into the 2002 season. The combined record of the last two Super Bowl champions, Baltimore and New England: 9-9.

The Ravens are 4-5. Out of 32 teams, they rank 16th in yards rushing per game, 17th in yards allowed per game, 16th in turnover-takeaway ratio and are tied for 15th in first downs allowed per game. They are tied for second place, or third place, depending on how you look at it, with Cleveland in the four-team AFC North.

The Patriots are 5-4 after being 3-0 and 3-4. They are tied for first in the AFC East with the Buffalo Bills, who have played three overtime games, and the Miami Dolphins, who have gone on streaks of 3-0, 0-1, 2-0 and 0-3 this season.

With a few exceptions, such as Green Bay and Cincinnati, the North and South poles of professional football, mediocrity has covered the NFL like a beige shag carpet. But, if you take the time to look closely, you will find that some mediocrities within the league are more mediocre than others.

Mediocre Team

The Dolphins rank 16th in yards gained per game, average gain per rush, average gain per pass play, third-down efficiency and punt return average; 17th in field-goal percentage and quarterback sack percentage; and 18th in gross punting average, average gain allowed per pass play and first downs allowed per game.

Mediocre Franchise

Since moving east from Cleveland in 1996, the Ravens are 55-55-1 in 6 1/2 seasons.

Mediocre Division

The AFC East has three teams tied for first at 5-4, with the New York Jets a game back at 4-5. Should the Jets beat Detroit today (the Jets are favored) and the Patriots lose to Oakland (Raiders favored) and the Bills lose to Kansas City (Chiefs favored) and the Dolphins lose to Baltimore (Ray Lucas starts at quarterback for Miami), all four teams in the AFC East will be 5-5.

Mediocre Quarterback

Kerry Collins has thrown eight touchdown passes and had nine passes intercepted in nine games for the 5-4 New York Giants this season. At 85.2, he is tied for 16th in the league in quarterback rating. His career regular-season record as an NFL starting quarterback: 50-47.

Mediocre Matchup

Today, 5-4 Oakland hosts 5-4 New England in a game that has been touted as a must-see grudge match, considering the events of last season’s Winter Wonderland Playoff Miracle (Patriots’ version) or Criminal Snow Job (Raiders’ version). New England’s Tedy Bruschi, a no-nonsense linebacker who will never hold a job in the NFL’s public relations department, had this assessment for the Boston Herald: “We’re both 5-4, and that’s nothing to write home about.”

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Not Too Bad, Not Too Good

Nine games into the NFL season, there’s not much excellence or outright badness, but there are plenty of teams bunched in the middle:

*--* Winning Pct. Range Teams 801-1.000 1 601-800 8 401-.600 15 201-.400 7 000-.200 1

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