Keith Duggan/Sideline Cut: Is there a gene that separates born GAA managers from the rest of us? Because, do not be fooled people, managers are a breed apart. The eight remaining heroes in this year's All-Ireland football season have a number of things in common.
Collectively, they illustrate the fact that Gaelic football has never been so well served. That is, never before has there been such a rich variety of talented managers on the scene at one time.
Each of the eight that will grace the beautiful Bainisteoir bibs this weekend are fascinating characters in their own right. On a given afternoon, they possess the ability to be great raconteurs. They are family men; they are successful in their personal lives.
They are meticulous, driven and given to disastrous fashion choices on the rare days they manage in hot sunshine. They never sleep. They are also, of course, deeply and unalterably mad. They say so themselves.
"Oh, sure I'm stone mad," they will laughingly reply when we enquire why they put themselves through the torture of managing their county.
We assume they are comically exaggerating but if you look close enough you can detect a glint of desperation deep in the pupils of their eyes. They are not joking. They are crying out for help.
Unfortunately, of course, there is nothing the rest of us can do. It is the werewolf syndrome. You either howl at the moon or you don't.
It would make a fascinating study, those latent symptoms of the born manager. For instance, when Mickey Harte and Joe Kernan were the apples of their mothers' eyes and running around in pressed short trousers, did a little voice inside their heads keep insisting they were somehow "different" to their friends?
Did Dom Corrigan make his Action Man do bleep tests instead of breaking out of POW camps? When John O'Mahony deliberated on his confirmation name, did he hand his list of substitute choices in beforehand or withhold them until the day?
And when Tom Carr played games of see-who-blinks-first in the classroom did the other kids spontaneously combust from the sheer intensity?
Think about the facts of being a manager. On some godforsaken, windswept January night, you meet in a dark field with about 30 young lads. You immediately try and convince this bunch they are better than every other team. In every case, bar one, this is a lie.
Still, you meet in that same field roughly 200 times over the year and you play some games on a Sunday. The purpose of these games is not to ultimately achieve success but - except for one team - to merely delay the inevitable disappointment.
Modern Ireland is a pressurised enough place to begin with. Given the age profile of most current county teams is such that they need to carry IDs just to get into a late night cinema screening, the manager in effect becomes a surrogate father to the whole lot of them.
In that way, being a county manager is kind of like being Mick Jagger. For even if the manager has his actual family reared, he must go through the adolescent rites of passage all over again. You have not seen a pout until you explain to a corner forward that can kick with either foot why you are dropping him.
You fret over the types of greens your little family eat. You warn them against the perils of drink.
You sigh when people ring you up to tell you your star midfielder was seen in a pub and said midfielder is a disgrace to the jersey and he had better be disciplined.
It pains you to discipline the big fella. You like him. You offer him a lift home after training. You tell him you used to play football with his oul' fella. You notice he is staring intently at the five cassettes that have been in every car you have ever owned since 1978.
Interestedly, he begins to rummage. He tells you he mistook your Mick Flavin tape for Flavor Flav. You blink at him. The rapper, he clarifies.
You have heard of a Rapper Geraghty who played for Louth in the '30s and wonder if there is a connection. Increasingly, you realise you have no idea what your team is talking about when they are not talking about football.
This also worries you.
You know that you are alone. That is how it must be. They can respect you and like you but when all is said and done, the manager stands alone. You have to be the oddball, the enforcer of rules, the shoulder to cry on, the unfair bastard. You are responsible.
The most you can hope for, win or lose, is that you get through an afternoon on the sideline without sacrificing your dignity.
There are times when it takes every ounce of will in your body to simply prevent yourself from foaming at the mouth and jumping up and down on national television.
If you lose, there is the comfort that it is, at least for a while, finally over.
With every win comes a fresh week and another set of worries.
The eight men we will see this weekend, they are beyond our help. They are all lifers in the prison of management. Free them from one post and they will inevitably turn up somewhere else.
Brian McEniff means what he says when he claims he would rather not be managing his beloved Donegal this season.
But see if you can tell that when he lines up for the national anthem on Monday.
The peaked green hat, the familiar posture. It is where he belongs.
McEniff could well be managing Donegal in 2033.
Managers much more than players live on the edge. Did anyone see Tom Carr bearhug Frankie Dolan after Roscommon's big win against Kildare? It was like a scene from The Ballroom of Romance.
Who could begrudge Carr the moment? He has done his time.
Managers will always say that their role is a minor one; that they can't really influence what happens on the field. But they do not really believe that. It is why we will see Páidí run the sidelines tomorrow, frantic and furious and passionate.
I get nervous just watching Páidí from the 45th row of the Upper Hogan, from where he is a tiny figure, waving and raging against dangers only he can see.
It is just his way of getting through. He has to believe he can influence every single ball that is kicked. He lives it, talks through it. You can see him wince at every stray pass.
Páidí gets through it by acting it all out in front of us.
Others, like Micko, just hunker down like they are about to smoke the peace pipe. Inside, though, they are burning up.
Management is a mug's game that somehow attracts geniuses.
By Monday evening, there will be just four winning managers left in the championship and four who are resigning themselves to having just lost.
It is hard to tell which bunch will be better off.