Sports

TEAMS KNOW IF THEY’VE ROLLED A WINNER ONLY AFTER THEY ADD ‘EM UP

HERE is the dirty little secret abut what awaits the Jets over the next few days, weeks, months and years: At some point, they are going to hire a coach, and that coach is going to be hailed by some as being a clever choice and ripped by others as being asinine, he will be celebrated for being a sharp up-and-comer or a wise, hardened, been-there veteran, or he will be castigated for being inexperienced or over-the-hill.

All these opinions will come gushing forth in an avalanche of certainty out of the mouths of newspaper columnists and television commentators and radio pundits and, of course, fans of every shade and hue of green. And though there will be a divergence of opinion, slight and great, out of every voice, there is really only one thing about which we can be absolutely, positively, unquestionably certain:

We don’t know.

We won’t know.

Until we know.

Hiring a coach isn’t the same thing as trading for a great player, or signing a wonderful free agent. There really is a measure of certainty there. The Yankees have no idea of knowing how many MVPs Mark Teixeira will win over the next few years, or how many championships that will translate to. But unless something very odd happens, he will post numbers relatively similar to those he always has posted. LeBron James, if he ever plays in New York, will not suddenly morph into Jerome James. We have 100-percent certainty on that.

Coaches? Hard to say. Always hard to say. Do you chase a coordinator in football, a bench coach in baseball, a top assistant in basketball, one without prior experience, because you’re smarter than everyone else? Well, it works wonderfully well if you are the Steelers hiring Bill Cowher in 1992, the Lakers hiring Pat Riley in 1982, the Twins hiring Tom Kelly in 1987; it doesn’t work out quite so well if you are the Lions hiring Marty Mornhinweg, the Yankees hiring Stump Merrill, the Celtics hiring M.L. Carr.

Do you get someone who’s established himself as a winner? That has to be a no-brainer, right? Sure it is, if you are the Jets hiring Bill Parcells, or the Cardinals hiring Tony La Russa, or the Lakers hiring Phil Jackson. It’s less of a scientific certainty if you are the Carolina Panthers welcoming George Seifert, or the Knicks welcoming Larry Brown, or the Mets and Yankees welcoming Dallas Green.

Think of it: If there are two men who are considered automatics now, whom you need only plug into your team to establish credibility and winning, in all of sports, they are Parcells and Lou Piniella, right? Both have long track records. Parcells took the Jets from Pats from 2-14 to the Super Bowl, took the Jets from 1-15 to the AFC Championship game, has helped take the Dolphins from 1-15 to the playoffs in less than a year. Piniella invented winning out of nowhere in Seattle. He helped foster legitimate hope that the Cubs could become viable by leading them to their first back-to-back playoffs appearances in a century.

All respect is due, and all respect is right.

But here is something to consider, for trivia purposes: Parcells has done wonderful things since he became “experienced,” and a “veteran winner” with a “long track record.” But he won his only two Super Bowls while he was still, very much, a “first-time head coach” who had been given the job when the previous coach bailed, who nearly was fired after his first year. Piniella? His one title, in 1990, came in Cincinnati, the first time he was really in charge of a club since his two stints with the Yankees came when the Yankee manager was still merely a marionette for the owner.

It was William Goldman who famously said of Hollywood: Nobody knows anything. Same with sports owners, and general managers, especially those who think there is some kind of winning formula for hiring GMs. Just look at our own teams:

The Mets won one championship with a first-time manager (Davey Johnson) and one with a manager who had served a prior internship in Washington (Gil Hodges). The Jets’ lone title came under Weeb Ewbank, who had already won two NFL championships in Baltimore.

The Knicks’ only two championships came under the watchful eye of Red Holzman, who is rightfully sainted now but was a failed coach in St. Louis and an anonymous scout before landing on the Knicks bench in 1967. The Nets’ two ABA championships came under the watchful eye of Kevin Loughery, whose only prior experience had been as one of the coaches of the historic 1972-73 76ers, who went 9-73. Loughery’s lifetime coaching record was 642-746.

The Rangers won in ’94 thanks in large part to Mike Keenan, who at the time was considered a sure thing and proved it; the Devils have won three Cups since 1995 with three different coaches, none of whom was exactly Toe Blake before he arrived. The Giants have won six titles. Tom Coughlin was the only coach who had worked anywhere but with the Giants before taking the reins.

And the Yankees, of course, may be the greatest example of all. They have won 26 championships under eight different managers (Joe Torre, Bob Lemon, Billy Martin, Ralph Houk, Casey Stengel, Bucky Harris, Joe McCarthy, Miller Huggins); only Harris ever had won a World Series before to coming to New York, and he was unceremoniously dumped by the Yankees midway through the season after leading them to the ’47 title.

What does that all mean?

Good luck, Jets. We’ll let you know how you did after we know how you did.

Mike Vaccaro’s e-mail address is michael.vaccaro@nypost.com. His book, “1941: The Greatest Year in Sports,” is available in paperback at bookstores.

VAC’S WHACKS

Turned on NBC on New Year’s Day, saw athletes slipping and sliding all around Wrigley Field, and it took a few minutes to blink away the hangover and realize they weren’t just showing the Cubs’ 2008 postseason highlight tape.

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A lot of the time you go to the movie theater, you wind up kicking yourself for flushing money. Then you go see a film like “Frost/Nixon” and you feel a lot better about things, because you know somewhere Ron Howard is busy working on his next movie, too.

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Not for nothing, but I firmly believe that if the Patriots had been able to get in the playoffs, they probably wouldn’t have left until it was time to go to Tampa.

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Good for Thomas Jones for putting his name behind his complaints. And with all the attention paid to the Jets’ quarterback, it was almost easy to forget all Jones did this year was lead the bloody AFC in rushing.