The San Francisco 49ers, who top the NFL in just about everything else, even lead the league in lawyers.
When the Super Bowl champions line up this fall, their center, quarterback and offensive coordinator all will have law degrees.
Center Bart Oates and quarterback Steve Young already have law degrees, so it may have made sense to hire Marc Trestman as offensive coordinator to replace Mike Shanahan, who left to take the Denver Broncos' head coaching job.
Trestman had been out of football for three years after previous stops in Tampa Bay, Cleveland and Minnesota, but he's a lawyer who in recent years has been selling bonds.
Coach George Seifert even had a joke about the addition of the newest lawyer to the 49ers' staff.
"I found out how successful our president has been. He's a lawyer," he said of Carmen Policy. "I found out how successful our quarterback has been. He's a lawyer. I found out how successful our center has been and he's a lawyer. I was a zoology major. I somehow stumbled into this thing."
Trestman even joked that he could speak legalese with Oates and Young, saying, "Maybe I'll be able to understand what they're talking about."
Trestman already had an offer to coach the offense at the University of Miami under new coach Butch Davis. He had coached at Miami from 1981 to 1984, when he became a mentor to Bernie Kosar.
Trestman's friends advised him not to blow the chance at the Miami job while he was talking to the 49ers. He had no ties to San Francisco and nobody thought he had a chance for the job because connections are usually needed to land an NFL position.
But Seifert was impressed with him in the interview. He had hired Shanahan even though he didn't have past 49ers connections and decided to go that route again. Maybe it's another reason the 49ers win. They tend to hire the best people where they can find them.
Seifert hired Pete Carroll, who was fired after one season as the New York Jets' head coach, to run his defense, and Carroll didn't have any ties to the team, either.
Trestman said he was surprised to get an interview, much less the job.
"I'm very overwhelmed," he said. "The thought of this happening would be more of a dream than anything else. I feel very, very lucky to be here."
The 49ers are such a tight-knit organization that Shanahan, even though he's now in Denver, offered to tutor Trestman on a few of the finer points of the San Francisco offense.
"The 49ers have been wonderful to me and I'm willing to do anything I can to help them out," Shanahan said.
Former 49ers receiver Dwight Clark, now a front-office executive, said, "I know how close to the vest [Shanahan] is with information, so for him to do this would be like giving up Colonel Sanders' secret recipe. It would be unusual."
But then, the 49ers tend to be an unusual organization. It's one reason they have won five Super Bowls.
Loopholes?
San Francisco's success isn't universally admired around the league.
Several teams were complaining about Deion Sanders again last week when a video game company revealed it signed a $2.5 million deal with Sanders but would give him only half that much if he left the 49ers.
There were rumors that Nike did the same thing last year, although the shoe company never admitted it.
If Sanders stays with the 49ers (the Miami Dolphins are going to take a run at him), there will be more complaints.
Although a spokesman said the NFL will continue to investigate the matter, there probably isn't much the league can do as long as it can't be proven that the 49ers were involved. Players are always free to make side deals.
The stocking plan
The Jacksonville Jaguars and Carolina Panthers figure to find a lot of coal in their stockings when the league holds its first expansion draft in 19 years on Wednesday.
This one will be televised by ESPN, which didn't exist when the Seattle Seahawks and Tampa Bay Buccaneers were stocked in 1976.
That time, the league didn't even announce which players were available in advance. It just released the list of players who were selected.
The one thing that hasn't changed is that the pickings will be slim. Teams will be rooting for players to be selected so they won't be charged under salary-cap rules for the prorated share of signing bonuses.
For example, the Washington Redskins will be charged $712,500 this year for the last prorated share of Desmond Howard's signing bonus, unless he's selected in the draft. If a team selects him, it has to charge the bonus against its cap, even though the Redskins already have paid it.
The list is filled with high-priced underachievers.
Only one Pro Bowl player, Michael Dean Perry of the Cleveland Browns, is on the list and he may not be selected because of his age (30) and $3.1 million salary cap number.
Jacksonville coach Tom Coughlin has said that he didn't expect to be overly excited about the players on the list, and he stands by that.
When asked whether the league is being fair to the expansion teams, he said, "It's not for me to say whether it's fair or not fair. If the shoe was on the other foot, I'd be protecting my players."
Each team must take a minimum of 30 players with at least $14 million of salary-cap value. They can take a maximum of 42. Coughlin said in his mock drafts he never took more than 33, so a lot of players will be left on the board.
The St. Louis Rams?
The owners will hold a special meeting in Dallas on Thursday to study the Rams' proposed move from Los Angeles to St. Louis.
There's not much question the move will be approved after St. Louis fans applied for 72,000 premium-seat licenses even though only 46,000 are for sale. That will produce more than $60 million for the Rams.
Although the Save the Rams group from Los Angeles wants to make a presentation, the owners won't do much more than listen politely.
The only real debate is whether the rest of the owners can find a way to get some of that $60 million windfall the Rams are getting. Some owners want to charge the Rams a relocation fee, although the Rams will argue that because St. Louis was rejected in expansion they shouldn't have to pay a fee to move there.
It's uncertain whether the owners will approve the move at this meeting or wait until the annual March meeting next month.
The signing derby
The NFL teams will have more than $2 million more to spend this year on player salaries because increased revenues are causing the salary cap to go up to at least $36.5 million.
But they won't have a lot of blue-chip free agents to spend their money on when the free-agency signing period starts Friday. It runs until July 15.
The Dallas Cowboys' signing of Michael Irvin to a five-year, $15 million deal was another example that most teams are willing to spend the money it takes to keep their top players.
The players available tend to be second bananas such as Alvin Harper, the Cowboys' No. 2 receiver to Irvin. He's a player the Redskins would like to get.
The Cowboys will try to keep Harper, but they may not be able to fit him under their cap.
The coach
Philadelphia Eagles owner Jeff Lurie has his coaching staff in place, but he seems to want to do the coaching himself.
When the top college prospects arrived in Indianapolis over the weekend for the annual scouting combine, Lurie was on the scene for first-hand evaluation.
Lurie, though, insists he's not going to meddle.
"I'll let these guys do their thing," he said. "I'm just here to understand the process."
The world-class lineup
New England Patriots owner Bob Kraft is finding it difficult to get financial help from the Massachusetts Legislature. Kraft wants a new stadium or improvements at Foxboro, but state lawmakers are giving him a cool reception.
But state House Speaker Charles Flaherty said, "The last time I checked Rome, London, Paris or Tokyo, none of them had an NBA, NFL, NHL or major-league baseball franchise, and I think anybody would list them in the top 10 world-class cities."