Donovan McNabb made the media rounds in Tampa before the Super Bowl -- not as often as if he were actually playing in the game -- but enough to make a couple of points he felt needed to be made.

 The first is that he wants to retire as a Philadelphia Eagle, to which many fans would say, "That's OK with us. Go ahead."

 That's not how he meant it, however. He wants to retire as an Eagle after another, oh, five or six seasons. When he's reached 37 or 38 and has a couple of Super Bowl MVP trophies in the living room, when he has finished the polish on his Hall Of Fame resume. That's when he wants to retire.

 To which fans would also say, "That's OK with us. Go ahead."

 In between, however, is probably where the truth of what will happen resides. Even if his term lasts just another two or three years but includes a Super Bowl win, most fans would probably accept that bargain.

A bargain, however, is not what McNabb intends to be for the organization. He wants his contract, which has two seasons remaining, upgraded and extended. He wants some assurance that there won't be a repeat of this season's benching -- or at least how it was handled.

It will all be discussed behind closed doors at the appropriate time, according to McNabb, and no doubt it will be. One piece of ammunition he will hold is the assertion by team president Joe Banner this week that the Eagles have no intention of moving past McNabb yet, and that he can't imagine a better guy to run Andy Reid's offense.

As much as McNabb made the media rounds this week, he had nothing on Banner, who was everywhere. Banner did his usual spin-doctoring of the past season: ultimately disappointing, but pretty good if you take a step back and look at it. Banner said nothing that would suggest the franchise will change any of its philosophies or methods for the coming season and the future in general. And if it takes underspending the cap by another $10 million -- as they did this past season -- well, they're willing to do that to prove the point.

To sum up: Donovan wants to be back and wants more money. The team wants Donovan back, but probably isn't that crazy about the money thing. Another season is gone beyond retrieval and the Arizona Cardinals are in the Super Bowl.

So, it's fair to say that most folks in Philadelphia are more interested in where McNabb intends to win his championship rather than where he wants to retire. If retirement is what's on his mind, the sooner the better.

 

For those writers and reporters who spend considerable time at the NovaCare Complex during the Eagles season and, most years, at least some portion of the playoffs, Thursday is known as Truth Day.

Thursday is Truth Day because it is when the coordinators sit and answer questions for the media. To be honest, Thursday is only Truth Day because that is when Jim Johnson gives his level assessment of all the transpires in his defensive realm.

Brad Childress used to help the truth quotient, too, when he was offensive coordinator, but new coordinator Marty Mornhinweg is not quite as forthcoming. To be honest, however, Johnson is enough.

Johnson comes from the great, flat Midwestern plains. He was a star quarterback at Missouri and began his coaching career at Missouri Southern. He takes his impartial, unadorned view of the world from those beginnings and from the nearly 50 years he has spent around the game.

When you have played and coached on both sides of the ball, things look a little more even, and Johnson has always viewed his job as simply trying to tilt the odds a bit in his favor. He has done that by being an aggressive risk-taker, a philosophy belied by his placid exterior.

Johnson is in a new game now. The Eagles released the information today that the 67-year-old coordinator is suffering from a melanoma reoccurrence that is threatening his life, particularly because of a bone tumor in his spine. He has already begun radiation therapy to attack the cancer.

When he had to coach from the press box during the playoffs and hobbled around badly with a cane, he said his back was acting up a little bit. Now we know it was much more than that, but it’s no surprise Johnson didn’t make a big deal out of it. Not his style.

People come and go in sports in this town and elsewhere. Johnson is known by reputation, but perhaps not that many fans would know him on the street without his baseball cap. He doesn’t do personal appearances, doesn’t seek out opportunities to be on radio or television. He stars every Thursday in the latest episode of Truth Day, but that’s about it.

Take it from someone who has listened carefully to Johnson, who has enjoyed a few hallway laughs with him and who has admired his steadfast belief in how the game should be played. This is not just a great coach, but a great man, and now he’s in a hell of a fight.

Think of him when you get a chance and offer up a word of hope. He’s going to fight it aggressively, which is the only way he knows to fight. He’s going to bring the house. But having a few friends thinking of him won’t hurt, either.

As rewarding as it is for a journalist to be at the big event, whateever that might be there are a few things about the Super Bowl that makes missing it all right with me.

It would have been exciting if the Eagles had made it, and there would have been the occasional grouperburger to take away the pain, but the SB is not only the most orchestrated event in sports, it attracts all manner of strangeness to its periphery.

At some point of the week, you have to deal with dumb, outside stories. It just happens. There is some soup commercial that has to be covered, or some tug-of-war between Iraq veterans from the competing cities, or something.

This came to mind when I saw the story about the Lingerie Football League and how their plan to broadcast a pay-for-view game at halftime of the Super Bowl fell through because the facility they chose is populated by nudists who didn't want to put on clothes. I think I have that right. The story is from the St. Pete Times and, I swear, I had nothing to do with the byline on the story.

Guarantee you, there are people in Tampa, real journalists or sort of, whose offices want them to do a LFL story. Perhaps some of them volunteered. I don't know. But that is the kind of relentlessly stupid outside story that makes staying home all right. If it would just stop snowing.

*     *     *

Loved the New York Post story in which Larry Bowa said that, well yes, Alex Rodriguez was sometimes called "A-Fraud" by his teammates, but, according to Bowa, it wasn't "malicious."

Oh, no. Of course not. And you can take Larry at his word on this thing. Not a malicious bone in his body.

*     *     *

Peeping Tom. That's what the Boston Herald is doing, publishing photos of Gisele Bundchen and Tom Brady on vacation without a care in the world and without a whole lot of clothes, either. This economic downturn is transforming U.S. newspapers into London tabloids. Imagine how agrieved Donovan McNabb would be if the Philadelphia papers tailed him around like that. Maybe we should find out.

A few random thoughts about the Sixers as they play two games on the road this week before coming back to meet Washington and New Jersey at the Wachovia Center on the weekend to begin a stretch of seven straight home games.

As the week began, the Sixers were a .500 team, headed for seventh or eighth in the conference seedings and another early playoff exit. Maybe that isn't the way it will work out, but that's the way it looks. In other words a repeat of last season, but with Elton Brand struggling to keep up this time.

So, make yourself Ed Stefanski. Assuming your goal is to win the NBA championship in your lifetime, how do you get from here to there?

The next month is going to be crucial and very interesting, as the Feb. 22 trade deadline approaches. Despite the favorable home schedule, it's going to be a tough stretch against some good teams. At the trade deadline, the Sixers could well be under .500 again and still trying to fit the pieces together.

As you look at this team -- assuming Brand doesn't enjoy a return to his pre-Achilles surgery mobility -- the future is going to hinge on the play of guys like Thaddeus Young, Marreese Speights, Lou Williams, Andre Iguodala and, perhaps, Jason Smith, if he can recover fully from his ACL surgery.

Together, they present exciting possibilities, but that's a group that won't fully mature for at least another season or two. Now, is it better to ride along with an even record while that takes place, or does the record now not matter? Would that group be even better if augmented by a high draft pick?

Depending on how you answer that question will also answer what you think about the idea of trading Andre Miller before the deadline. Miller is a wonderful point guard and the Sixers won't win as many games without him, but maybe that would be a good thing in the long run. He turns 33 in March and is in the last year of his contract. Will he still be as effective, and as deserving of the deal he will no doubt get, when Young, Speights and the others are ready to compete for a long run in the postseason? I'm not so sure.

Brand is another problem entirely, and he might not be tradeable right now, given his shaky physical status and his new contract. But Miller could bring you a valuable piece in trade and the Sixers' future wouldn't be hurt if they drifted home with something less than a .500 record.

I'm not advocating tanking games. That's bad for business, bad for morale. But tanking the roster is another thing. It might be what Stefanski was doing in part last season when he traded Kyle Korver. If so, it didn't work. The team played at a higher level that could have reasonably been expected. Losing Miller would have a greater effect.

And your opinion?

On the opening day of the Eagles season, which also happened to be owner Jeff Lurie's 57th birthday, he stepped outside his house on the Main Line, released 20 butterflies and made a wish.

The butterflies were a birthday gift, and now you have the answer to the question: "What do you give someone who has everything except a Super Bowl trophy?"

If Lurie wished for that one element that has remained missing from his tenure as the Eagles owner, he came a lot closer to having the wish fulfilled than it seemed possible when the team was lolling along with a 5-5-1 record in late November.

That's the kind of story that tends to make fans roll their eyes a little bit, and part of the reason that locals have never exactly warmed to the Boston transplant. The rich, as Fitzgerald suggested, are different from the rest of us. They have more money and people give them the gift of a butterfly release -- which has become a staple at certain schmaltzly weddings, usually during the playing of "You Are The Wind Beneath My Wings," but hardly seems appropriate for a grown man in his front yard.

Nevertheless, you should read the excellent interview with Lurie done by Eagles beat writer Bob Brookover that appeared in Sunday's editions of the Inquirer. Not only does Lurie feel your pain, but he might even suffer it more. The owner explains why Andy Reid is the right guy, in his mind, to continue the quest for a championship and finish the journey of the butterflies.

Well, at least here's one mini-controversy we don't have to worry about any more. Arizona Republic columnist Dan Bickley is whining in his blog that it appears the new president will be rooting for the Pittsburgh Steelers and not the Arizona Cardinals in the upcoming Super Bowl. Oh, no.

Would Barack Obama have embraced the Cradle of Liberty as his choice to the Super Bowl, had the Eagles not stumbled against the Cardinals in the NFL championship? Or would he have gone with the Steelers?

We'll just never know... and never have to spend reams of newsprint investigating and delivering that vital bit of news. We won't have to endure the silly bets between the mayors. ("I bet my city is going to default before yours!") We won't have to accept the B-list celebrities who suddenly show up wearing Eagles hats.

Look at it as a tradeoff. Would have been interesting, though.

*     *     *

I don't know about you, but I can't skip any column that contains this sentence: You don't have to be a Commie to know that democracy based on pacifist leadership has seriously failed in Cowboy Nation.

That comes from Randy Galloway of the Fort Worth Star Telegram as he deftly segues from the new leadership in Washington to the crises faced by football owner Jerry Jones. It doesn't need much more introduction than that.

Way back when baseball's Players Association was first winning the right to free agency, and union boss Marvin Miller had the owners on the run, the iconoclastic Charlie Finley of the Oakland A's stood up at a meeting and told everyone what he thought.

He was Crazy Charlie, of course, the modern reincarnation of Bill Veeck. He put his players in white shoes (oh, my) and hired a world-class sprinter to be his designated base stealer and he advocated an orange ball and a million other things.

The other owners regarded him as a cross between between Uncle Fester and Timothy Leary, and they didn't much like him. But Finley stood up and said that, of course, the players should be granted total free agency and, in fact, they should be granted it every year. No player should have more than a one-year contract.

Everyone was stunned, but none more than Miller. The color drained from the labor leader's face because he understood what Finley was getting at. No player would ever get a long contract based on what he had done. Players would get one-year deals based on what they could do. Fortunately for the players, Finley was hooted down. Well, maybe he was harrumphed down. Same thing.

This comes to mind as Ryan Howard once again enters the salary arbitration game. He will get a one-year contract and earn either $14 million (the team's offer) or $18 million (his request), depending on the ruling of the arbitrator.

Wouldn't it be a different baseball world if every player had to go through a similar contract process? The Phillies made two terrible recent long-term signings, Adam Eaton and Geoff Jenkins. They have to live with those mistakes, rather than have the flexibility to move past them.

There would have to be some mechanism to allow teams an edge in keeping their own players, to allow continuity. The NBA figured out how to do that despite a hard salary cap. Baseball could do the same thing.

In the meantime, the Phillies this week did a very good job of locking up Cole Hamels, Ryan Madson, Shane Victorino and Joe Blanton. It was a good week for the Phillies. Better than the week endured by the Eagles. But we've gotten used to that, haven't we?

SCOTTSDALE, Ariz. -- During all those years of coming here to watch the Eagles play the Cardinals in Sun Devil Stadium, the events of Sunday are still difficult to process.

In those days, not so long ago, the fans put bags on their heads and screamed terrible things at owner Bill Bidwell and accepted the fact that they would sit on those searing aluminum bleachers every September and, through the eye holes in the bag, watch another season get thrown away.

Maybe that's part of the reason I was so sure the Eagles would beat the Cards in the NFC Championship game. Call it muscle memory, but when you see that bird on the side of the helmet, you expect the team to fall apart.

 That's also what happened after halftime, but then the Eagles lost the game a second time. So, how did the Cardinals prevent the Eagles from getting to the Super Bowl?

Well, in three postseason games, the Eagles scored 26, 23 and 25 points. In those three games, the Eagles gave up 14, 11 and 32 points.

So, the issue is obvious. The offense was just as productive. The defense fell apart. They didn't do the one single thing that had to be done: Get to Kurt Warner and rattle him. Why not? Heck of a question. Warner mixed it up well, got rid of the ball quickly and had a running game that kept the Eagles off balance.

Still, Jim Johnson got outcoached and he would be the first to admit that his first-half scheme wasn't as good as the first-half scheme of the Cardinals.

The Cardinals.

Oh, and my apologies for touting the Eagles and the under. Didn't work out well for me, either.

GLENDALE, Ariz. -- The Arizona Cardinals are in the Super Bowl. It doesn't matter how many times you say it or write it, that doesn't seem to make a lot of sense.

Still, that will be the case when the game is played Feb. 1, and the Eagles, who were good enough to prevent that, didn't finish the job.

They dug a hole, climbed out and then, at the point in the script when Kurt Warner was supposed to throw an interception that Asante Samuel returned for a touchdown to clinch the 32-24 win, their defense stumbled and their offense came up short. Instead, it became a very strange 32-25 loss.

You can pick apart each play, wonder why Rod Hood wasn't called for pass interference, wonder why David Akers developed a case of the shanks at the worst possible time, wonder why the Eagles were suckered by a gadget play to the most dangerous player on the field.

All of that is worth examining, but none of it matters now. Next season will arrive, and it will arrive with Andy Reid as coach and Donovan McNabb as quarterback, and everything will be the same. The snowdrift of disappointment will be a little higher, maybe a lot higher, but the landscape beneath it is unaltered.

Was this a good season? If you get to the league's equivalent of the Final Four, it has to be considered a good season. Twenty-eight other teams would certainly think so.

But, as I said in the column filed after the game, the Eagles might come away from this season more popular with their fans if they had lost the week before to the Giants -- if the game was well-played and they went out with their heads held high. Losing to the Cardinals, on the doorstep of the Super Bowl, doesn't feel that way.

This was an awful loss. It might have been even more painful than the NFC title loss to the Bucs, the final game in the Vet. Time will have to tell that story, though. The story at the moment is that the Arizona Cardinals are in the Super Bowl and the team that should have prevented that came up small when it counted.

It's a little hard to believe, isn't it?