Parcells’ Exit Will Set Off A Chain Reaction

Bill Parcells is expected to tell his team minutes after the Super Bowl that he is leaving, and while he’s expected to become the New York Jets’ coach, there’s talk that San Francisco defensive coordinator Pete Carroll will be his replacement in New England and Patriot defensive coordinator Bill Belichick will become the Oakland Raiders’ head coach.

Carroll said the St. Louis Rams offered their job to him, but he declined and decided to gamble in the hopes the Patriots called.

The “Belichick-to-the-Raiders” rumors are wonderful. Given Belichick’s sour personality and reluctance to commiserate with the media, he would appear to have been auditioning all his life to be the Raiders’ next head coach.

Belichick, a Parcells’ coaching clone, failed to win friends and games as head coach of the Cleveland Browns.

“Right now I’m here to focus on the Green Bay Packers and that’s what I’m here to talk about, not last year, not next year and not 1983,” Belichick said.

Favre can jump off wagon

Brett Favre’s agent revealed the Green Bay Packers quarterback has been given the go-ahead by the league to resume drinking alcohol.

The agent, James “Bus” Cook, stressed that the two-time MVP doesn’t plan to spend the days leading up to Sunday’s game against the New England Patriots partying away the nights on Bourbon Street.

“He’s got one thing on his mind and that’s to win the Super Bowl,” Cook said Wednesday from his office in Hattiesburg, Miss. “Brett’s not expressed to me that he wants to go out and drink. It’s not a matter of drinking; it’s a matter of choice.”

Favre admitted being addicted to a pain-killing drug, and he spent 46 days in a Kansas treatment facility last summer. But he protested when the league also banned him from drinking alcohol for two years and subjected him to random testing.

Cook said Favre told him last week that league officials agreed to change the quarterback’s status in its substance-abuse program and that he’ll no longer face random testing for alcohol use.

Priceless tickets

For Patriots fans like the Morlinos - season ticket holders for 31 years, Pats planter on the mantel, team schedule on the refrigerator - winning the chance to buy tickets in the Super Bowl lottery was like, well, winning the lottery.

But landing seats 1 and 2 in section 109, row 18 of the Superdome was just the beginning of Jerrie and Frank Morlino’s good fortune.

The couple decided to auction their tickets to the highest bidder to raise money for their son-in-law, Raphael Wolkenfeld, who was paralyzed and brain-damaged by a mystery seizure just three months after his wedding.

By the time bidding was over, the Morlinos took in more than $11,000 for Wolkenfeld, along with surprise offers of new wheelchairs and free medical services - and a second set of tickets, to which a bidder attached one condition: that the Morlinos use them.

The Morlinos, loyal to the Patriots through the 2-14 seasons, are the kind of fans a team should be grateful for. But the Morlinos see it the other way around.

“If they hadn’t won, it wouldn’t have gone this far,” Frank Morlino said. “I guess I owe them.”

Marlboro signs off

Under threat of government court action, Philip Morris Inc. agreed to remove a large Marlboro sign from the Superdome so the cigarette ad won’t be televised during the Super Bowl.

The Cigarette Labeling and Advertising Act prohibits cigarette advertising on television. The Justice Department obtained court orders in 1995 against Philip Morris and New York’s Madison Square Garden to make sure cigarette ads placed around arenas and athletic fields are not telecast.

The company’s lawyers wrote the Justice Department that “Philip Morris has made arrangements - for this special event only - to ensure that the Marlboro sign in question will not be in place during the Super Bowl.”

Around the league

San Francisco 49ers owner Edward DeBartolo Jr. was charged with battery for a post-game scuffle in which a heckling fan was punched and another head-butted. DeBartolo, a companion and two Green Bay Packers fans were issued city citations, Police Chief James Lewis said… . The Detroit Lions named former San Francisco 49ers assistant Marc Trestman the team’s new quarterbacks coach.