Parcells Can Forget a Gift From This Writer

Jon Heyman of Newsday doesn’t think much of the new man at the top for the Dallas Cowboys:

“With the wedding of Jerry Jones with Bill Parcells, the man whose very own book title, ‘The Final Season: My Last Year as Head Coach in the NFL,’ requires correction, the only thing guaranteed is the ugly dissolution of this unlikely union within a couple years, maybe less than that. I can hardly wait.

“Thanks partly to an army of bootlickers, Parcells is known exclusively for his football success, not his utter lack of loyalty or integrity in chasing jobs and leaving jobs. But the facts are these: He has been a head coach in three NFL locales, won a Super Bowl in one and wreaked havoc upon exiting three. So mathematically speaking, for $17.1 million Jones buys a 33% chance at a title and a 100% chance of experiencing havoc.”

To be perfectly accurate, Parcells won two Super Bowls with the New York Giants and took the New England Patriots to another one, so maybe a little havoc is a reasonable price to pay.

Another view: Adrian Wojnarowski in the Bergen (N.J.) Record: “Jimmy Johnson should have been the Cowboys’ coach as long as he wanted, but [owner] Jerry Jones couldn’t live with Johnson so popular, so beloved, so synonymous with the back-to-back Super Bowl success.

“Eventually, it will happen with Bill Parcells. Eventually, the two biggest egos in the NFL will turn the Cowboys into one surreal soap opera.”

Trivia time: Who was UCLA’s first consensus All-American football player?

Frustrated: Woody Paige in the Denver Post: “I get mad and scream and turn blue and bite my lip about a [college football] playoff system. Let the top eight teams play and determine a real national champion, blah, blah, blah, you and I say.

“And the bowls and the NCAA give us the BCS [which has one too many letters in the middle, if you get my drift] and a pacifier and hope we will go away quietly.”

Rest in peace: Bill Lankhof of the Toronto Sun, on the Raptors saying they plan no personnel moves despite a losing record in the NBA: “Welcome to Raptorland, where the wheels are spinning but the hamster is dead.”

A good idea at the time? Green Bay quarterback Brett Favre, telling the Atlanta Journal and Constitution why the Falcons traded him to the Packers: “I’m sure I didn’t help my cause by trying to drink up Atlanta.”

Looking back: On this day in 1976, the Cowboys became the first wild-card team to make it to the Super Bowl with a 37-7 rout of the Los Angeles Rams in the NFC championship game at the Coliseum.

Trivia answer: Burr Baldwin, an end, in 1946.

And finally: Steve Frost, the older brother of former Nebraska quarterback Scott Frost, pocketed $34,100 by wining three straight nights on the game show “Jeopardy.” One of Frost’s correct answers was the author of “Les Miserables.”

Dwight Perry of the Seattle Times says Nebraskans were undoubtedly shocked to learn it was actually Victor Hugo -- and not the 2002 Cornhusker football team.