There are some owners in the NFL who, anxious to justify the big-dollar contracts of the league's premier performers, have taken to blithely referring to their sport as "entertainment."

True enough, in an era when there is so much competition for disposable income, football must market itself in a manner that transcends sport. But even in most off-Broadway plays, and the lowest-budget independent flicks imaginable, the high-profile stars characteristically show up for rehearsals.

Which, it should be noted, is something they don't often do in the NFL's equivalent of walk-throughs, otherwise known as preseason games.

Most exhibition contests (the NFL loathes that term) feature overwrought understudies, rookies attempting to make the team and veterans trying to eke out another year's worth of paychecks, while the starters take over the spotlight for two quarters or less. No matter how good the script, chances are a movie director would have little vision of the quality of his product if he expected Julia Roberts for a scene, and Julia Child showed up instead.

There are, after, all degrees of entertaining. A chuckle while watching some nondescript sitcom is not the same as a belly laugh during a Seinfeld re-run, right.

And so this query: How much about the 2002 season can be divined when the divining rod is the just-completed preseason schedule? The answer: Not a heck of a lot.

"It's just a different ball game," said Tampa Bay coach Jon Gruden. "Your goals aren't the same at all. There are things you learn about your team, but you're more concerned with evaluating players, and the record isn't nearly as important to you. Plus there's a lot of mixing and matching going on too. It's not easy to get a handle on how things will go (in the regular season). The slate is blank again."

That is not to suggest, of course, that the preseason games aren't of value in terms of preparation and assessment. But it would be ridiculous to apprise that, just because the St. Louis Rams were winless in preseason, they will suffer a regular-season free-fall. Even the staunchest Atlanta Falcons fan isn't likely to wager that the team will go 16-0 this year just because it had an unblemished preseason mark in the first season of new owner Arthur Blank's stewardship. In his heart, Steve Spurrier probably doesn't believe the Washington Redskins will score 35 points a game just because they took advantage of a lot of second-unit defenses in the preseason.

Dennis Green, the former Minnesota Vikings coach, allowed that it is a "dangerous business" to make assumptions based on a club's performance in the preseason. It is a point well-taken.

Recent history demonstrates that there is a very real caveat emptor factor involved in preseason play. One simply can't attach too much importance to success in dry runs.

Turn on the stage lights and the same actor who got through his lines so flawlessly in run-throughs might suddenly go brain-dead. The first-year tailback who ran so well in exhibition games might never find a hole if you insert him into a regular-season contest.

In the past five years, 14 teams finished preseason play unbeaten, and those clubs then went on to post an aggregate 131-93 record in the regular season. Eight of the teams won 10 games or more. But digest this little morsel while considering the significance, but also unpredictability, of preseason records: Minnesota was unbeaten in preseason play in 1998 and then followed that up with a 15-1 mark in the regular season. Yet San Diego was 4-0 during the 2000 exhibition slate and 1-15 once the games really counted.

"Let's face it," said Chargers linebacker Junior Seau. "It is night and day. Preseason is like slow motion, brother, compared to the real deal."

More than anything else the preseason schedule, this year as in the past, is a time of evaluation. The primary purpose of the games, beyond once again getting players acclimated to the rigors of contact, is to see if the youngster who looked so good in shorts and a T-shirt is just as promising dressed out in pads. It is an opportunity to gauge the maturity of second-year veterans, to forge camaraderie, to develop a mindset.

But most guys who have been around the game for any tenure, coaches and players alike, don't assign much legitimacy to preseason results.

Examine the case of the NFL's leading rusher in preseason, Rudi Johnson of Cincinnati, who ran for 199 yards in four exhibition outings. Do you think Johnson, a second-year veteran, feels confident he is going to get the ball very often as long as Bengals tailback Corey Dillon is healthy? Nope.

"It's good because I made the most of my chance," Johnson said. "But who knows when I'll even touch the ball now. I mean, Corey is a great back and he isn't a guy who comes out (of the game) very often."

Last time we checked, no pundits had predicted that Johnson would lead the league in rushing now that the ammunition is live. Neither is there a legion of naysayers suggesting the Rams demise is imminent. Granted, coach Mike Martz created a perception of concern by closing practices to the media for the first three weeks of the season, but as long as Kurt Warner is upright, St. Louis is apt to be among the league powers once again.

That said, there are teams that looked so good in preaeason -- the New York Jets leap to mind -- one can't help but to have been impressed. But the Jets were a playoff team in 2001, people seem to forget, and might simply be a year better and better versed in the Paul Hackett offense this time around.

One longtime NFL personnel chief now retired, but who still watches nearly every preseason game televised, allowed that he evaluates only personnel in the contests. He never looks at the score, never considers circumstances, and rarely critiques game plans, because teams so rarely plot strategy.

"You watch matchups, individual players, the young guys," he said. "But it's called 'preseason' and not 'prejudgment' and everyone has to remember that. You just can't place too much emphasis on it."

Len Pasquarelli is a senior NFL writer for ESPN.com.