Detroit Free Press

When he first took the job, he had no indoor plumbing. He got his water from a well and it had tiny bugs in it ...

The ball came down from the lights the way a pitchfork might come down from the lights, the way a live grenade might come down from the lights, you could watch its frightening descent and know exactly the terrible thing that was about to happen and there was nothing, absolutely nothing, you could do about it.There. I've just summed up a day in the life of the Lions' secondary.

He entered the room in a three-piece suit, sat down and began scanning an information sheet about me. I was interviewing him, but in many ways, like a good lawyer, Johnnie Cochran was preparing for me."I know you're on a tight schedule," I said, "so I'll get right down to it.""OK, great," he replied, his gaze never coming off the page. I watched his eyes dart back and forth beneath his glasses. I kept picturing a judge hanging over us, saying, "Are you ready to begin, Mr. Cochran?"

First of all, Wayne Fontes is still the coach of the Lions. I don't fire him. You don't fire him. All the pundits on radio and TV don't fire him. That task is for someone named Ford, and if you go by the history of that name and this team, well, there's no telling what might happen.But just as we do our Christmas shopping early for a holiday that is still weeks off, perhaps the Fords already are thinking about a new man for the job, even though the current coach has three games left to endure, er, play.

* HUT ONE: I'm gonna miss the little fella. There. I said it and I'm not ashamed.I'm talking about Lou Holtz, who announced his retirement this week -- actually, he announced the sentence "I think this is the right thing to do" this week, approximately 2,538 times during his news conference, which, by the way, is still going on down in South Bend, Ind., and is being carried live by ESPN6 -- and yes, I have to admit, I got a little misty.