The home teams in the playoffs are now 7-1; only Baltimore has won on the road. But there is one interesting thing to note about the 4 remaining teams particularly in light of the fact that defense seems to be propelling them. Other than Dennis Green - who has been in the league for about 10 years as a head coach, all the other teams are coached by men who were offensive coordinators just prior to moving up to the top job. To their credit, they seem to have hired good defensive guys and let them run the show on that side of the ball, but it seems to me that on balance, offensive coordinators tend to do better at the next level than defensive guys who seem to adopt the "let's-not-lose-the-game" philosophy as opposed to "let's-score-and-see-if-they-can-score-as-much" philosophy.

Art Shell is rumored to be interested in becoming the Redskins' offensive line coach under Marty Schottenheimer. Shell "resigned" in Atlanta recently from the same job and was replaced yesterday by Pete Mangurian who had been the head coach at Cornell. Last night Keith Olberman had some advice for Mangurian when he said that if you leave the head job at my alma mater, you ought to do something other than a lateral job move.

Head coach at Cornell is not the bottom of the food chain in coaching by a long shot. Dubuque just named a new head coach and a new assistant football coach. I tried to find out what league they were in and I could not even find out what Division they were in. I suspect these guys would aspire to moving up to Cornell if they do well in their current job for the next five years or so.

The Chiefs have officially fired Gunther Cunningham as they pursue Dick Vermeil to be their coach. Why Vermeil wants to continue coaching is beyond me, but he is obviously a good coach and Cunningham was unimpressive in two years in KC. The story is that Wade Phillips will be fired today by Ralph Wilson in Buffalo and then he will name a new GM who can hire a new coach without having to look like the bad guy who walked into town and swung an axe as his first move. Both Cunningham and Phillips were on my list here last week as guys who ought to be "moving on."

Danny Boy Snyder continues to show the world how tough he is and how he holds people accountable for their performances. The Redskins have fired their public relations director and their community relations manager. But in a show of unprecedented magnanimity, the Redskins have allowed Norv Turner's secretary to resign.

Talk about having your mind made up for you, Clemson CB Alex Ardley had said that he might declare himself eligible for the NFL draft this year but that he had not made up his mind. Over the weekend, Clemson coach, Tommy Bowden, dismissed Ardley from the team for breaking "important team rules". No, I don't know what the "unimportant" team rules are and how they differ from the "important" ones. But somehow, I think that if the choice for Ardley is between the NFL draft and a five course load including Mongolian Philosophers of the Third Century and The Calculus of Alfred E. Neumann Applied to Hangnails, my bet is that Ardley is in the draft pool.

Michael Bennett of Wisconsin declared for the NFL draft; he could have used another year to learn more of the techniques of being a running back. There is more to it than sprinting through a big wide hole in the line. Also Justin Smith who was the prime pass rusher for Missouri will enter the draft instead of going back for his senior year. I liked Smith in the one game I saw him play; he will probably be a first round pick.

It seems as though Dmetrius Underwood has attempted suicide yet again. In the past his attempts have been such that only he was the one who could have been harmed; he tried slitting his throat in the past. This time he sprinted onto a highway against traffic causing cars to swerve but causing no accidents. Underwood was detained by the police and then hospitalized. After cars stopped, he kicked a few of them and asked drivers for a gun so that he could "go to Jesus". Underwood has bipolar disorder and is prescribed medication so the incident over the weekend means that he needs new meds or he missed a pill. I know this is probably not the most humanitarian stance one could take, but if he really wants to "go to Jesus", why do people feel compelled to prevent him from doing so?

In baseball, the Cleveland Indians are approaching the signing of Juan Gonzales to a one year deal worth about $12M. I guess Cleveland has to do something to try to replace Manny Ramirez' bat in the line-up, but I think that Gonzales is yesterday's news. And I suspect that more than one baseball exec thinks the same way because so far the only offers to Gonzales have been reported to be one year deals. Just remember that Gonzales turned down an 8 year deal worth $140M last winter. With financial acumen like that, I doubt he has a future career on Wall Street.

In another case where the tank is much closer to empty than full, the Texas Rangers are hoping to sign David Cone for a 16th season. Unless last season was a real aberration, Cone will need the kind of runs that the Rangers' line-up seems ready to score just to make it to the fifth inning.

The Red Sox figure to score a lot too this year and so they must have felt safe in offering Kent Mercker a contract to have him come to spring training. Of course, Kent accepted because he was looking at the possibility of spending the next 20 years of his life selling used cars.

The Anaheim Angels have signed Ismael Valdes from the Dodgers. He got $2.5M for a year with a lot of incentives. I'm sure someone can look up the exact numbers, but my sense is that this guy is about a break-even pitcher for his career who had one really good year about 5 or 6 years ago and who has a tendency to "aggregate mass". Somehow, I wonder who does the major league scouting for the Angels. As I recall, they traded Jim Edmonds last year for Ken Bottenfield (now with Houston); there may have been other players in that deal, but I don't remember any. Anyone who thought that was even close to an even swap must not have seen many games. Now they go and get Valdez who is hardly a top flight pitcher. Maybe they can do the Dodgers a real service and sign Carlos Peres too. That would allow the Dodgers to upgrade their starting rotation by filling in for these two goofs. I wonder if Jim Palmer and Tom Seaver have been throwing lately?

In the NBA, we had the spectacle of Paul Westphal being fired in Seattle because Vin Baker and Gary Payton would not play for him. Nate McMillan took over and was supposed to be someone the players respected. Well, the bloom is off that rose already. After the Sonics lost to the Sixers by 32 last weekend, McMillan said, "If you're not giving effort and concentration, you're going to get embarrassed. There's some negative energy on this team and until we change things we'll be faced with this kind of situation a lot."

Just up the road from Seattle, the Vancouver Grizzlies are stinking out the joint and the rumblings have begun that the "players are tuning out coach Sidney Lowe." Losses by 25 or more are not uncommon for Vancouver and rumors have begun that the team is considering blowing the whole thing up and trying to start over. As the trade deadline nears in February, look for Sharif Abdur-Rahim to be traded if there is even a sensible offer made (supposedly the Wizards offered Rod Strickland; the only benefit there is that Strickland's contract is over at the end of this year.) and look for Bibby, Reeves and Austin to be on the block too. In fact, if the trading rules were to permit it, the Grizzlies might be willing to trade Reeves for the rights to Moses Malone; these two guys have about the same degree of mobility.

Little Ricky Pitino is supposed to quit as coach and president of the Boston Celtics today. It just has not worked out for him in Boston and the Celtics seem to be going through the motions just like a bunch of other mediocre teams. (David Stern, are you watching? Could this be why fans are tuning out? Too many teams just going through the motions?) The real indicator was reported on Saturday when someone found that Pitino had listed his townhouse for sale and when asked the reason was that since his kid was going off to college they wanted to move to a smaller place. Hmmm…?? But do not feel too badly for Little Ricky. Over and above the tens of millions he made from the Celtics in the last few years, the listing price for his house would net him a $2.5M profit.

Yesterday pointed up a major problem with horse racing these days. Laurel Racecourse used to be one of the second tier tracks in the country and the quality of racing was good because it was competitive. However, under the current track management over the past 5-10 years, the facilities have turned into the black hole of Calcutta and the racing is fast approaching that status. Yesterday there was a nine race card. Two races had four horses in the starting gate; five races had all of five starters; the other two races had six contestants. In one of the six horse races, there was an entry so there were only five betting options.

Memo to Track Managers Everywhere: If you can't fill the fields in the races on your card, run fewer races. You will save purse money and you will get more betting on the races with more entries. Then you can begin to raise the purses you offer slightly which will get you more horses so you can run a few more races with fuller fields. It ain't rocket science, folks.

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