Sorry, Malcolm.

In backing out of a non-binding accord with the Bucs and owner Malcolm Glazer on Friday evening, Bill Parcells stupefied a long-suffering franchise he once thought he might someday lead to a Super Bowl appearance.

He also rendered cripple a team that pursued him for more than a year, made sheer bumpkins of the men who were to have signed his paychecks, and demonstrated again that until "The Tuna" is landed and filleted, nothing is certain.

Make no mistake, Bill Parcells is the best coach these eyes have witnessed in 23 years covering the NFL, a superior strategist and uncanny amateur psychologist. Having served as pool reporter for his New England Patriots team in Super Bowl XXXI, observing close-up Parcells' attention to football minutiae and the meticulous pursuit of excellence that he commanded from his charges, this columnist concluded long ago Parcells was a genius of preparation.

But, alas, Parcells is a flawed genius.

He is a man capable of brilliant sideline decisions delivered after just milliseconds of deliberation, but also a person who surrendered to his own tortuous process of overanalyzing every other component of life. That latter trait -- one can see Parcells filibustering quietly before opting for ketchup over mustard -- makes him human. Unfortunately, the results of Parcells' maddening and manic waffling too often result in near-inhumane ramifications.

Like on Friday night when, only 3½ days removed from a press conference in which Parcells was to have been introduced as a franchise savior for the fourth time in his NFL career, he left the Bucs tossing and turning at sea. Noted one league official: "Man, are they screwed, huh?"

But there is always that potential when one deals with Parcells.

It is not, to be sure, remotely close to dealing with the devil. It is, as evidenced again Friday, an encounter with the devilish. In this case, the Glazer family reaped exactly the bad seed it sewed a year ago when the franchise clandestinely began to court Parcells and essentially readied the gangplank for Tony Dungy.

Nudged into action not so gently by the incumbent coach's agent and also representatives for Parcells, the Bucs dismissed Dungy on Monday night and finally concluded an embarrassing bit of verbal inertia that left a good man dangling too long in the wind. From a more pragmatic standpoint, Tampa Bay ownership committed two fatal blunders, ones from which this team may now require years to recover.

For openers, the Glazer family should have better heeded Parcells' track record of sidling up to a coaching vacancy, then moonwalking away from it when crunch time arrived. Second, the team should never have cut ties to Dungy until it had secured Parcells' signature on a contract.

And made certain it was blotted dry.

Parcells' flirtations with coaching vacancies have been well documented. After the 1991 season, he reneged on an agreement with then-Bucs owner Hugh Culverhouse to relocate to Tampa and run the football operation of the bedraggled franchise. The late Culverhouse later recounted that Parcells had made 32 requests of the team and they met every one, and that still wasn't enough to ensure his services. Sources insisted to ESPN.com that Parcells tiptoed away from the Bucs last January when rumors were rampant that he would replace Dungy as coach.

May we suggest that the Glazer family now commit to memory these words: Caveat emptor.

For a man blessed with such a keen eye for talent, Parcells somehow never sees on first glance the seemingly lush grass across the street isn't nearly as green as it looks, at least not when he makes a further inspection. By the time Parcells gets down on his knees and discovers the weeds hiding among the healthy blades, he is literally knee-deep enamored and then must reverse field.

There is no weakness in scratching an itch, no sin in heeding the heart's call, no pretense in the admission that coaching is in your blood and it's the one thing you do better than almost everyone else on this planet. But it is a tragic foible, one that affects others, to not expeditiously discern the difference between thinking you want to pursue something and knowing you do. Infatuation can be a dicey dance, Parcells and the Bucs discovered on Friday evening.

Ironic in all of this is Parcells' fixation with his legacy, his very real concern over how he will be remembered, that most human byproduct of basic ego. After his name was announced as a Hall of Fame finalist for a second consecutive year Wednesday, he fretted that a return to the sideline might delay the induction he so desperately seeks for validation.

His rationale, that selectors would ignore him because they figured all along his coaching career was merely in its latest suspended animation, was on-target. But now Parcells must deal with the possibility that Hall of Fame voters will punish him for toying frivolously with their hearts and with the Tampa Bay franchise.

It could be years before Parcells sees the inside of the Canton, Ohio, shrine now. In those years, he could have been doing the one thing he does best and the undertaking at which he makes the biggest difference in people's lives -- coaching football. At some point, when he's speaking into a microphone on television, it will occur to Parcells he's far better blowing into a coach's whistle. That realization could be a difficult one for such a proud man.

A good, New Jersey guy, the kind of man with whom you might have wanted to share a six-pack or two in another life? For sure. But as Friday night manifested again, a complex man playing at a simple game. A man of brilliance and botchery. A coach defined by his past, afraid of the future.

In the end, a man so torn by his own passions, he struggled with every yes and no decision.