America at Large: On January 3rd, 2002, Duane Charles (Bill) Parcells faced a bank of microphones and stated rather unambiguously: "There won't be any more coaching rumours about Bill Parcells, because I've coached my last game."

"That is not a lie. It's a terminological inexactitude."

- General Alexander Haig

This announcement followed a whirlwind courtship between Parcells and the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. Exactly how extensively the negotiations had proceeded was unknown at the time, but at the very least Parcells had committed a violation of an unwritten code among the National Football League coaching fraternity: he had indicated a level of interest which Joel Glazer, whose family owns the Bucs, considered sufficiently promising to have cleared the decks by firing their incumbent coach, Tony Dungy.

Embarrassed after Parcells left them standing at the altar, the Glazers convened a Clintonesque press conference in which they roundly denied having even spoken with Parcells about the hastily-created vacancy. At various times various Glazers said they had not offered Parcells the Tampa Bay job, they had not discussed it with him, they hadn't even bothered to calculate what interest the crusty coach who answers to "The Tuna" might have had.

A few weeks later in New Orleans it became apparent the sportswriters who pass judgment as electors for the Pro Football Hall of Fame found the credibility of both parties somewhat dubious.

Although Parcells, one of two men ever to coach two different teams (the New York Giants and the New England Patriots) to the Super Bowl, was qualified in every other respect, he was denied enshrinement because a preponderance of the voters felt he was not telling the truth when he said he would never coach another NFL game.

This supposition will be proven correct tomorrow morning when the Dallas Cowboys convene a news conference to announce that Parcells has signed a four-year, $16 million contract to become their sixth coach.

That Parcells and Cowboys owner Jerry Jones have been carrying on a dalliance has been an open secret for the past few weeks. When CBS unloaded a bombshell on December 21st, revealing that Jones had flown in his private jet to meet with Parcells at a New Jersey airport, it was widely (if wrongly) assumed that The Tuna might have leaked the news to enhance his own negotiating position. Those who bought into this misapprehension didn't understand the way Parcells sometimes devious mind functions: since he was working in retirement in an analyst's role for ESPN, there is no way Parcells would have burned his bridges by tossing that valuable nugget into the lap of a rival network. Ergo, the leak must have come from Jones himself.

The irony here is that the headstrong coach has regularly taken umbrage at what he considered interference on the part of the front office. And the world of football knows no more meddlesome owner than Jerry Jones.

Parcells addressed that subject in his book The Final Season (2000). In that tome Parcells recalled to his ghost-writer, the Boston Globe's Will McDonough, having observed Jones' hands-on approach several hours before a Jets-Cowboys game at Texas Stadium back in 1999.

"Jerry Jones, from what I was led to believe that day talking to some of the Dallas people, is very involved . . . I know at one time he played college ball and coached a kids team or something like that. But the NFL is supposed to be a little different . . . Hey, it's his team, and he can do anything he wants with it. That's his prerogative. But I don't see any good it can do for him to get involved in the coaching end of the game. None whatsoever," wrote Parcells, who added " . . . I'd be out of there the next day. I couldn't coach in that situation myself."

WE can probably assume that at some point during that pre-Christmas summit meeting at Teterboro Airport, Parcells explained to Jones he was misquoted by McDonough. In any case, The Tuna's revisionist view of the Dallas owner, as expressed to ESPN's Chris Mortensen in an interview the following weekend, was that, "I know one thing about Jerry Jones. He wants to win. I wouldn't consider going to an organisation that doesn't have that kind of attitude."

Parcells and Jones met again in Long Island last Friday, and two days later Jones, still maintaining he had not offered The Tuna the job, returned to Dallas and fired coach Dave Campo. Typically, Parcells has made no public pronouncement on the proceedings, but his Goebbels, McDonough, told a Dallas radio station two days ago that The Tuna "loves the idea of coaching the Dallas Cowboys. Believe me, right now, this might be the only place he would coach in the NFL."

It should probably be pointed out that McDonough, who is also a Hall of Fame elector, is the same man who stood before the voting panel a day before the Super Bowl last year and delivered an impassioned speech in which he all but swore on his mother's grave that Parcells would never coach again. As it turned out, Parcells and McDonough weren't the only ones speaking with forked tongues last January. Following that face-saving news conference after The Tuna wriggled out of their nets, the Glazers pulled out all the stops, handing two first and two second-round draft choices to lure Jon Gruden from the Oakland Raiders.

A few days ago Joel Glazer re-insinuated his team into the mix by producing what he claimed was the contract Parcells had signed to coach Tampa Bay last January before backing out of the deal. It is now his contention the Cowboys should compensate the Buccaneers for signing The Tuna.

It will be left to the NFL commissioner Paul Tagliabue to sort out this mess, but we can surmise this much: Glazer, who claimed he hadn't discussed the Tampa Bay job with Parcells, had. Jones, who claimed he hadn't offered the Dallas job to Parcells, did. And Parcells, who claimed to have coached his last game, in fact has not.

So just exactly how is Tagliabue supposed to ferret out the truth here? By asking McDonough?