Lynch is considering a short list of teams that includes the Colts, Jets and Patriots. Craig Jones/ Getty Images

SOMEWHERE ALONG THE COURTNEY CAMPBELL CAUSEWAY BETWEEN CLEARWATER AND TAMPA -- It was another pleasant valley Thursday at spring training, and I was returning to the Sports Illustrated condo in Tampa after a day with the Blue Jays in Gulf-Coastal Dunedin when the cell phone rang.

"Hey, Peter. It's John Lynch."

"Wow," I told the soon-to-be-ex-Tampa Bay safety. "I'm just listening to this melodrama on the radio. You got whacked today. Pretty wild."

Lynch, who has played his entire 11-year NFL career with the Bucs, had called a press conference earlier that afternoon to say he'd been released by the team. He and Tampa Bay general manager Bruce Allen had discussed the parameters of a vastly restructured contract -- which would have paid him $4.1 million in 2004 and $5 million in 2005 -- Tuesday night, but Lynch says the Bucs never made him an offer. And it's likely the five-time Pro Bowler wouldn't have taken a deal cut down to the quick anyway.

So the all-sports station in Tampa was promising an explanatory press conference with Allen. I asked Lynch, who was still in the San Diego conference room where his press conference had taken place, if he wanted to hear what Allen had to say when he came on the air. "Sure," he said. "I'd love to."

But Allen wasn't ready yet, so Lynch and I continued talking. "I wanted to retire a Buc," he said. "I told my agent, David Dunn, 'Find a way to get it done.' But they never offered me a contract. Bruce said to me: 'John, it's my call. It's a philosophical decision. I just think we need to go our separate ways.' "

The Bucs as we know them don't exist anymore. I fully expect Warren Sapp will be next to go, if he can find a team that wants him. His search is getting a little embarrassing. Doesn't anyone out there want to offer the defensive tackle any sort of significant contract?

The offensive line departed first (Randall McDaniel, Jeff Christy) and then other veterans (Dexter Jackson, Al Singleton, Keyshawn Johnson, Nate Webster) and now Lynch, the stalwart, Stanford-smart, perfect-gentleman Buc who will be either Steve Largent or Theo Epstein in his next life.

This is what happens to great and successful teams. Eventually the veterans have to go somewhere else to finish out their careers as the franchise tries to get an unemotional handle on the salary cap. And the fans are livid.

For Lynch, it's a hard fact of life in the NFL: Hard-hitting, 32-year-old safeties who are coming off surgery to remove neck spurs are fair game for the cap-release bin. It doesn't matter if that he has given 164 games to the cause. If the Bucs can save $4.1 million by whacking him, they'd almost be irresponsible if they didn't do it.

"Still," said Lynch, "it shocks you when it happens. After 11 years, it's the only team I know. I love that place. I think of all the great times, and what a wonderful place it was, and how great it felt to bring the franchise up from the depths to win a Super Bowl. It hurts."

Allen came on the radio. I put the cell phone up on the dashboard and drove while Lynch, for 33 minutes, listened to every word. Allen was the Evasiveness Champion of the World. He said all the right things, but he wouldn't utter what he obviously felt, which was that he and Jon Gruden couldn't trust that Lynch would be the old Lynch because of his injury, and that they had a young kid, third-year safety Jermaine Phillips, who could play Lynch's spot at a fraction of the price.

"It's with such a heavy heart that we do this," Allen said on the radio. "As much as we'll miss John Lynch the player, we'll miss the person even more. It'd be so wonderful if Michael Jordan stayed with Bulls forever, and Junior Seau stayed with the Chargers, but we don't live in that world anymore."

When it was over, I asked Lynch what he thought.

"That was nice," he said. "It was. I happen to think they've made the wrong decision, because I can still play. But I respect the decision they've made. I know it wasn't easy for Bruce. What I respect is they've got tough decisions to make, and they at least talk to you about them."

As of Sunday, Lynch was considering a short list of teams that included the Colts, Jets and Patriots. He's likely to make his decision this week

The fans were in mourning, of course. "I've lost all faith in the Bucs," said one caller to the station. I'm not saying the Bucs made the right decision, because I don't know how long Lynch -- who was given a clean bill of health following his neck surgery -- can play at his customary high level, or even if he still can. But these are the calls a team has to make after winning a Super Bowl and having lots of big-money guys on the team. If they don't, then they get to December with holes all over the roster because they're so cap-strapped and injuries have been rapacious, and then the fans are screaming because the front office went too long with the veterans.

I'm not dismissing the fans' feelings. Of course it hurts to lose a guy like Lynch. But it'd be a lot worse if they hung onto him and he went on injured reserve with some injury or other during the season, with that cap cost hanging on them like an anchor.

Days like Thursday show the downside of doing business in the NFL these days. It's the teams that don't have the guts to make calls like this that are usually out of contention in mid-December.

"The American League is going to be like the old NFC Central. You know, the Black-and-Blue Division. We're all going to beat the crap out of each other."

--Boston Red Sox pitcher Curt Schilling

Well, maybe the old Black-and-Blue Division, when every team contended except for Tampa Bay. Maybe it'll be the same in the American League East; every team except for the Devil Rays will beat the snot out of each other.

Interesting commentary/questions about Terrell Owens -- all coming, of course, before the special master made his ruling in the Owens case Tuesday. That, and miscellany, fill this week's 'bag.

HELLO BAHRAIN! From Jack Bates of Phoenix: "I'm here in Bahrain with the Navy, so I often miss out on a lot that happens. I look forward to MMQB each week to help keep up with what's going on and to get my mind on something that's just enjoyable. Good insight on the Jevon Kearse situation. I'm wondering if that same type of thing was going on when the Cardinals let David Boston go with nothing in return."

Pleasure to hear from you, Jack. Thanks for writing, and good luck over there.  And thanks for protecting us. The Chargers haven't released Boston yet. They're trying to make a trade for him, perhaps with Miami, if they can find a way to get anything for him. I do believe at the end of the day if they can't get anything of substance, they'll let him go. Boston is just too undisciplined for Marty Schottenheimer.

OWENS SHOULDN'T BE ABLE TO HOLD THE RAVENS HOSTAGE. From Tim of Dedham, Mass.: "You are right on this Terrell Owens saga. His agent screwed up, and now he wants to blame the 49ers for making a trade that could help them? The modern-day athlete needs a drastic wake-up call! What is the sense of having a contract if you don't hold up your end?"

Bingo, Tim.

GIVE US A THURSDAY GAME, NFL. From Wendal Dorsey of St. Louis: "As a serious football junkie, I NEED a Thursday night game. By Thursday, I've watched NFL Live every day, and HBO's Inside the NFL twice. I need that game. Solution to the competative issue: schedule it so that each team only plays the Thursday game once. Sixteen weeks (excluding bye), 32 teams."

Bob Kraft and the NFL Broadcast Committee, are you listening?

STOP BEING A LEAGUE APOLOGIST. From Matthew R. Smalls of Albany, N.Y.: "Mr. King, I like your column less and less every time I read it. You have become so conservative in your views this past year. What gives? You frequently side with the league, and have resorted to name-calling when describing certain players like Owens and Keyshawn Johnson. You can provide an analysis of their situations without resorting to name-calling. It makes you look like a guy with an axe to grind."

Matthew, thanks for writing. I felt strongly about the Owens story, and so I wrote strongly. I can't figure out how I'm conservative in asking a guy to live up to the terms of a contract.

HE WONDERS HOW THE SKINS CAN SPEND LIKE THIS. From Tony Hamilton of Las Vegas: "Do the Redskins have some sort of special dispensation that makes them exempt from the NFL's salary cap? At the conclusion of every off season it seems like they've finally broken their bank, only to come back the next year with more and more big signings?"

Tony, check out the story I wrote in the magazine last week about the Redskins' salary-cap maneuvers. Basically, they figured a way to get their six big-money guys to count for only $13.2 million, collectively, on this year's cap.

HE'LL MISS McCAREINS, NOT KEARSE. From David Bone of Dickson, Tenn.: "No one I know is crying any tears because the Titans let Jevon Kearse go in free agency. The majority of fans in Nashville have been down on him for quite a while. He just hasn't stayed healthy and produced the numbers that would justify paying him what he wanted. He had a great rookie year, did OK the next two and then spent the last two limping off the field every time he got a hangnail. Now, Justin McCareins? We are crying over him."

The Jets made a terrific pickup in McCareins. He'll be worth thesecond-round draft selection they dealt him for several times over.

I had never toured spring training sites before. I've been to scattered games over the years, but hitting five sites in five days last week -- Tampa (Yankees), Fort Myers (Red Sox), Fort Lauderdale (Orioles), Dunedin (Jays) and St. Petersburg (Devil Rays) -- was tremendously fun and educational. Five things I learned:

1. Traffic in Tampa at 7:40 a.m. and 4:50 p.m. is every bit as thick and unrelenting as it is on the Garden State Parkway at the same times. That stunned me.

2. The crowds are amazing. When you can't buy a ticket unless it's a scalped one to a Yankees-Twins split-squad Monday-afternoon game, you know spring training has changed, and not for the better. And if you know you're coming down here, it might be wise to book a hotel well ahead of time. The only thing left in Fort Myers last Tuesday was a thin-walled Super 8, at the amazing cost of $149.95 a night.

3. Greatest ballplaying moment of the week (two, really): Ken Griffey Jr. hit one of his classic old home runs in Dunedin Thursday, using his beautiful swing to loft a moon shot way over the right-center-field fence. My old buddy Hal McCoy of the Dayton Daily News (who I used to compete against in a former job) was, just that day, writing how amazing it is that no one thinks Griffey's going to do anything this year while Junior is quietly having a ridiculously good camp. I also saw Griffey rope a double to right off Pedro Martinez Tuesday night.

The other neat thing was seeing Pedro and Curt Schilling throw 5 2/3 collective innings Tuesday. Has there ever been a better 1-2 combination on the mound during a spring game, at least recently, than Pedro and Schilling?

4. I covered a sullen Reds' team in the early '80s as a backup beat writer for the Cincinnati Enquirer, and I have to say I thought the moody idiots in that clubhouse were indicative of what every baseball team had. So I braced myself for a bunch of uncooperative guys in tough clubhouses here. Stupid me. Maybe it's because it's because of the more relaxed nature of spring training, but what a bunch of good, cooperative, congenial guys. Jon Lieber, Joe Girardi, Kurt Ainsworth, Rodrigo Lopez, Derek Lowe, Terry Francona, Ted Lilly, Greg Myers, Pat Hentgen (Are all Cy Young winners such princes?), Vernon Wells ... Thanks for making a new experience a fun one, fellas.

5. Spring training is still the best of the preseasons, by far. Last Thursday, you could walk up to a window in Dunedin and buy a ticket seven rows up between home plate and third base to watch Roy Halladay versus Ken Griffey, live. Twice.

1. I think the Cowboys got a great deal in Drew Henson, whom they acquired from the Houston Texans on Friday for a third-round pick in the 2005 draft and then signed to a moderate contract (an eight-year deal, with the final four years voidable). The question many teams obviously had about the guy is whether a three-year layoff was too much for a quarterback, and it may be. But I don't quite understand how a QB can go from the top prospect in the draft (which some teams thought he was) two or three years ago, to a value approximating maybe the 85th pick in the draft NEXT year. Somebody explain that to me.

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2. I think it probably shouldn't have surprised me to find so many baseball people who are big football fans, but it did. Blue Jays manager Carlos Tosca, who lives in Florida during the offseason, was curious about his Bucs. He wondered about Sapp, and Tampa Bay's free-agent moves, and why the Bucs didn't get Jeff Garcia. It's baseball season, but it's never not football season. Derek Lowe was all over me for Lions' info, as was Pat Hentgen. Those Michigan guys will never give up on the Leos. Lowe and Doug Mirabelli own a fantasy football team together, and Lowe told me they spent six hours on their draft late last summer. Jays' catcher Greg Myers asked about the Raiders. Toronto third-base coach Brian Butterfield wanted to know everything about the Patriots. It sounded like he wants them to draft Chris Perry, the Michigan back. Late in my interview with Schilling down in Fort Myers, he gave me my Quote of the Week in an effort to make me feel not so much like a stranger in a strange land.

3. I think the Bears got themselves good value in the free-agent right tackle they signed from Kansas City, John Tait, though some would argue that paying $5.5 million a year for a guy who isn't Rex Grossman's blind-side protector is excessive. I wouldn't. Once the Bears sign Ephraim Salaam for the left side, which appears likely, they'll have a professional set of bookend tackles.

4. I think it's interesting to note, and pardon me while I don my skeptical hat, that while the Browns have been desperately trying to upgrade their offensive line for the last two or three years, two of the guys they let go, center Shaun O'Hara and tackle Barry Stokes, are scooped up as nominal starters by the Giants. Is that an upgrade, Tom Coughlin?

5. I think these are my non-football thoughts of the week:

a. Goodbye, Curb Your Enthusiasm. We will miss you desperately. Two suggestions for next season, whenever that comes: Wandering Bear and Jeff's wife must return in expanded roles. And please, no Sopranos-length layoff before new shows begin.

b. Speaking of The Sopranos, the best plot twist in the next couple of weeks would be for Adriana to confess to her gal pals and for Carmela to shield the poor little dear. And how about Steve Buscemi bringing in the massage chair! What a scream.

c. Montclair High School Mock Trial Note of the Week: New Jersey North Regional finals -- Kittatinny High defeats Montclair. The dream dies. The great lessons of an incredibly valuable activity live on.

d. Montclair High School Softball Note of the Week: On a 29-degree-wind-chill morning fit for neither man, beast nor southpaw hurlers, the 2004 Mounties bowed to Roselle Park 6-4 in the season-opening scrimmage Saturday. There've been warmer sled-dog races. For those keeping score at home, senior lefty Mary Beth King, pitching with sleeves for the first time in her life, opened with three shutout innings. Looks like sleet and/or snow will derail the girls this week, and, truth be told, they're not going to be in mourning if it's that cold.

e. Coffeenerdness: You have to fix that swill you call decaf, Dunkin Donuts. Trust me on that one.

6. I think I still can't figure out how that University of Pennsylvania Law School professor could side with Terrell Owens in his free-agency hearing on Monday. And I stick by my original opinion last week that it'll be a horrible day for the league if he rules in favor of Owens.

7. I think it's interesting how, at this time of year, people like me who watch about nine minutes of college basketball all season sit there with a bracket sheet and fill it out and think: "Hey, I've got a real chance!'' I did watch in wonderment, though, as Billy Packer oddly savaged St. Joe's. The Atlantic 10 got four teams in the tournament, and Packer talked about St. Joe's like the Hawks hadn't played a soul all season. They beat Gonzaga, you know. One other note: I hope CBS shows us that Taylor Coppenrath kid from Vermont in the first-round game against UConn. He sounds like a poor man's Larry Bird.

8. I thought it was interesting to hear lots of baseball people say they don't need a salary cap that's the same for all teams. Befuddling. Devil Rays manager Lou Piniella did tell me he thought the problem could be helped hugely by a salary floor of $60 million and a cap of $120 million. "If baseball is serious about addressing competitive balance, they've got to do something like that,'' he said.

9. I think, not that the lords of football have asked me, but a day at training camp would be a lot more interesting for fans if each practice ended with a controlled scrimmage. I realized this the other day, sitting in the stands a few rows up from the field in Dunedin, watching Halladay pitch to Griffey. I was thinking: This is what football camps are missing. Wouldn't it be fun for fans watching the Patriots, for instance, to see 10 live plays at the end of practice, Tom Brady throwing to Deion Branch, with Ty Law in his grill? Or the backups could take some snaps. It wouldn't have to be the starters all the time.

10. I think, speaking of Law, that all the sound and fury of his weekend pronouncements about not wanting to be a Patriot fall on deaf ears here. New England isn't asking him to take a pay cut. The Pats are asking him to continue playing for the money spelled out in the contract he signed in 1999 -- the one that has made him the highest-paid corner in football over the past five years and that will pay him slightly more in real dollars than the NFL's franchise fee ($7 million) for corners this year. I like Law a lot, both as a player and a person. But there's nothing unjust about his contract situation.

Sports Illustrated senior writer Peter King covers the NFL beat for the magazine and is a regular contributor to SI.com. Monday Morning Quarterback appears in this space every week.