1. I'll take Jax plus 4 at NY Giants for $11. Jax could win the game outright even though Giants have something important to play for.

2. I'll take Tampa plus 2.5 at Green Bay for $11. Tampa has to win to have a playoff chance. Tampa is the better team. Tampa could actually win and break their streak of never winning when it is colder than 40 degrees at game time. I'll also take Tampa/GB UNDER 37 for $11. Maybe a touch of horizontal snow and a wind chill of minus 35 will show up on the weekend???

3. I'll take Seattle minus 3 vs Buffalo for $11. Buffalo is in disarray; Seattle played hard last week against Oakland.

4. I'll take Oakland minus 9 vs Carolina for $11 only if Denver wins its game against SF on Saturday. That will give Oakland something to play for since a loss under those circumstances makes Denver the division winner and Oakland a wild card team.

As soon as the weekend games are over, the non-playoff teams will disperse for the Holidays. Probably some owners will take pity on the coaches that they will ultimately fire and wait until after Christmas Day. That is the humane thing to do. But curmudgeons are not known for their humanity so here is my list of people that ought to get the axe and the ones that are "on the bubble".

Wade Phillips has to go in Buffalo. After the "Music City Miracle" last year, they blamed the special teams coach and fired his butt. Well the Bills' special teams stunk again this year. It isn't the coach that was the problem; it was the players. (Danny Boy, take note. LeCharles McDaniel is probably laughing out his butt at you and your obvious fixes now that the Redskins special teams have gotten worse since he left.) But Wade Phillips created and then mismanaged the entire QB controversy in Buffalo. He has to hit the bricks.

It is too soon to know if Al Groh or Bill Bellichik will make it in their jobs. I doubt that either one will be there in five years but they should not be fired this off season.

If I owned the Jags, I'd have a very long talk with Tom Coughlin very soon after the game on Saturday. The Jags have major salary cap problems and may need to blow this team up in order to reconstruct it. If so, they might be 3 years away from serious contention and the question is whether or not I want Tom Coughlin to be the drill sergeant from Hell for the next couple of years with teams that are basically going nowhere. Unless there is a way to preserve this team structure, I think I'd send Coughlin on his way.

The Bengals just signed Dick LeBeau for the next three years. So he has job security for at least the next two years unless he manages to decapitate himself in a tree grinder. The Browns are going to have Chris Palmer back if Palmer agrees to some "structural changes" and "philosophy changes" that the front office is going to lay down. I have no idea what that means and what the front office might think he could have done with this team this year. The Browns played most of the year with Spergon Wynn and Doug Pederson at QB; that is not a top notch starting QB tandem for the Fargo Fannies of the Frozen North League. If they want to fire Palmer, they can find justification in the record, but if they think any other coach would have had the Browns knocking on the door for the playoffs, they are smoking something that is very potent and very illegal.

I'd fire Gunther Cunningham just because I think the Chiefs are mired in mediocrity and he hasn't done anything to change anything. I'd take pity on Mike Riley and fire him too. This poor bastard is going to get to come back and coach the Chargers again next year. Isn't that kind of thing banned by the Geneva Convention?

In the NFC, the only coach I'd fire would be Dan Reeves even though Dan says he wants to come back for the last year of his contract. The Falcons stink and it seems that Reeves has lost the team. But the Falcons' management is known for being cheap and will likely not fire him and have to pay 2 coaches next year.

The Redskins will go out looking for a big name coach and may wind up hiring Terry Robiske full time because all the name coaches told Danny Boy to go and do this with his that. If that happens, I can't wait to see the marketing spin that these PR gurus will put on that decision. When they are done with it, Terry Robiske will be certified to have been Amos Alonzo Stagg in a former life.

Speaking of Terry Robiske, the Washington Post reported today that on the long interception that Jeff George threw against the Steelers last week, the play was not in the play book. Supposedly, George told Irving Fryar to forget the call from the bench and to just go long. As I've said before, from the right shoulder to the fingers on his right hand, George is a gifted and maybe even a great QB but between the ears he is a disaster and he magnifies that disaster with his clearly charming personality and demeanor. Do you wonder why he is now on his 5th team and why Norv Turner was not anxious to play him?

A columnist in The Sporting News says that just maybe Dave McGinnis and Dick LeBeau have the right stuff to turn around those sorry franchises. He says that McGinnis has Bill Bidwell's ear and Bidwell listens to him and will let him run the show. He says that Dick LeBeau has a unique way to reach his players. Frankly, this sounds to me like a stretch and a way to wring a column out of nothing during the Holiday season. The surest way to get the Cardinals and the Bengals on a different track is to send both owners on a slow boat to China with no satellite phones. Believe it our not, the Cardinals are one of the teams with some "salary cap problems and decisions to make" in the offseason. How can that sorry-assed compilation of mediocrity have salary cap problems?

If I gave out awards I'd make Jim Haslett the coach of the year in the NFC and Brian Billick the coach of the year in the AFC. The MVP for the NFC would be Marshall Faulk and in the AFC it would be Rich Gannon. Rookie of the year in the NFC is Brian Urlacher and in the AFC it would be Jamaal Lewis. And for those who disagree, that is your prerogative. You are entitled to your opinion and that entitlement also permits you to be wrong!

I hope Alan Greenspan does not read the sports page; it could give him the wrong ideas. He always worries about inflation and the pressure put on inflation by rising wages and rising levels of disposable income. Well, if he reads the sports page, he might see that the average major league baseball salary jumped 17.3% last year and that does not factor in the Alex Rodriguez and Manny Ramirez contracts. Chairman Greenspan might look at that data and raise interest rates to 54%.

Chairman Greenspan may also take note that the contract that Venus Williams just signed with Rebok for $40M to wear and endorse their shoes and clothing is 33% higher than the value of the contract signed by Vince Carter with Nike just last year. I guess there are people who will buy things just because someone else wears them or says they are good, but it is frightening to think there are $40M worth of those consumers who make decisions that way. And to my tennis-loving buddy in Pizmo Beach I ask:

Will you be sporting Venus' shoes and togs on the court now?

But don't get me wrong, I love sports...