Expect to hear about the feel-good story of Kurt Warner during Super Bowl week ... over and over.

Which is why you listen when he talks.

"League wide, I'm not sure I've ever seen as many surprises -- teams going in with high expectations being where they are now," Reeves says. "But it's a long season. You've got to keep playing each week, and see what happens over the second half.

"It's been disappointing, but there's so little difference between top teams and bottom teams now that if you're not ready to play every week, you can get beat."

It has happened to Atlanta a lot this season. Reeves' Falcons were 14-2 a year ago and reached Super Bowl XXXIII. They are a dismal 2-7 this season and perhaps the best example of the league's dramatic and widespread reversal of fortunes.

Consider:

• There are only five teams with winning records in the NFC and four of them (Detroit, St. Louis, Washington and the Giants) had losing records last year. Incredibly, the Lions and the Rams are atop the conference with 6-2 records.

• The final four teams from a year ago (Atlanta, Denver, Minnesota and the Jets) are a woeful 12-23. The Vikings are the only team with a realistic chance to make the playoffs.

• The gold-standard teams in Dallas, Green Bay and San Francisco, who have won seven of the last 11 Super Bowls, are a pedestrian 4-4, 4-4 and 3-5, respectively. Quarterbacks Troy Aikman, Brett Favre and Steve Young, increasingly fragile, have all suffered serious injuries.

Is it parity, the long-stated goal of the most socialistic league in professional sports? Or is it merely mediocrity? Actually, it's both.

The league has its coveted close games -- the breathless mantra is "On Any Given Sunday ..." -- but the quality is decidedly lacking. Privately, league and team officials admit they are concerned.

Scoring is down. Washington running back Stephen Davis has as many or more touchdowns (12) than five entire teams -- Arizona (nine), Cleveland (10), Philadelphia (11), Tampa Bay and Cincinnati (12).

The New York Giants, who have scored precisely as many points as they have allowed (138), are somehow tied for first in NFC East at 5-3. Defensive end Michael Strahan, who beat the Eagles in overtime with a 44-yard interception return 10 days ago, was the team's best offensive player.

Some of the games -- take the Jets' numbing 12-7 victory over Arizona on Sunday, for example -- have made MLS contests look exciting.

Greg Cote, who covers the NFL for the Miami Herald, is a big fan of today's game. "Have you ever noticed," he says, slyly, "how much parity sounds like party?"

Operating in close quarters
Of the 128 games played so far, 43 have been decided by three points or less. That works out to a percentage of 33.6, a number that has the folks at league headquarters on 280 Park Avenue bright-eyed and bushy-tailed. Last year's number: 20.8. Since 1970, when they started tracking this statistic, no season has come close to approaching 30 percent.

"Parity," intones George Young, the league's senior vice president of football operations, "does not mean mediocrity. It means competitiveness. We want our games to be competitive and entertaining.

"Listen, TV ratings are up. Stadiums are sold out 85 percent of the time, compared to 72 percent a year ago. Obviously, the people are voting with their fannies in the seats. They're voting with their fingers on the remote control."

Parity, apparently, sells.

Twenty of the 31 teams have won at least four games so far and are still in good position to make the playoffs.

	“	Listen, TV ratings are up. Stadiums are sold out 85 percent of the time, compared to 72 percent a year ago. Obviously, the people are voting with their fannies in the seats. They're voting with their fingers on the remote control. ”
		— NFL senior vice president of football operations George Young

Through eight weeks of the regular season, the league's average paid attendance was 65,154, an increase of 1,134 over last year's all-time season record of 64,020.

The Jacksonville Jaguars (7-1) are perhaps the best team in the league. Michael Huyghue, the team's senior vice president of football operations, defends the aesthetic quality of the games.

"It's good," he says, unenthusiastically.

"What's really important is that all those teams in the running for the playoffs puts a lot of focus on the second half. No one's tanking out there when a 9-7 record gives you a realistic chance of making the playoffs."

Fighting the system
This is the seventh year of full-blown free agency, and the cracks in the system are starting to show. Steelers president Dan Rooney is so worried about the system, he has asked for a meeting with league owners and NFL Players Association Executive Director Gene Upshaw after the season to revamp things.

The salary cap, designed to level the field and restrain owners from baseballesque spending fits, has done just that. Unfortunately, it has also left teams with little or no depth. With two-thirds of the league's teams up against the current cap of $57.3 million, an injury or two to key players can be devastating. When the Jets lost quarterback Vinny Testaverde in the opener, their season was essentially over. The league's two leading running backs a year ago, Terrell Davis and Jamal Anderson, suffered identical, season-ending knee injuries. Denver and Atlanta haven't recovered.

There used to be 14 teams and 12 good quarterbacks, a sportswriter friend of mine likes to say. There are now 31 teams, but there are still 12 good quarterbacks. A team almost has to be lucky to land a Neil O'Donnell as a $1 million free agent backup. O'Donnell went 4-1 for injured Steve McNair and is a big reason the Titans are 6-2.

The Vikings, seemingly set with Randall Cunningham, picked up Jeff George for a paltry $400,000 as insurance. Minnesota has won three straight with George calling signals and might, by the end of the season, be the conference's best team.

George, not surprisingly, is a big fan of parity. "I think if you look at last year, there were maybe two teams, Denver and (Minnesota) that were head over heels over everybody," George says. "But now with free agency and what has been going on throughout the league, you just don't know. You can have a down year and the next thing that team is going to the Super Bowl.

"I think it is great for the league and especially for the fans."

Another thing working against well-played games is increasingly impatient owners. Coaches, who once got four years to turn teams around, now seem to get about two years. And every time a coach is fired, the offensive and defensive coordinators go hopscotching all over the place.

Continuity in offensive and defensive schemes has become exceedingly rare.

Leveling the field
The Rams have enjoyed terrific efforts from quarterback Kurt Warner and running back Marshall Faulk, but they might have guaranteed themselves a solid season back on Dec. 20, 1998. That was the day they lost to the Carolina Panthers 20-13.

A single touchdown is what separated these 4-12 teams when the league schedule was made. The Rams, by virtue of their fifth-place finish, got an easier schedule. While the fourth-place Panthers drew Jacksonville, Washington, Green Bay and Pittsburgh, the Rams got Baltimore, Chicago, Tennessee and the Giants. The Rams' non-common opponents are 18-15, while the Panthers' are a sturdier 21-11. It might seem like a subtle difference but, all things being equal, the easier schedule can mean an extra victory or two. That's the difference between making the playoffs and missing.

The NFL, of course, leads all leagues in leveling the field.

Teams in baseball, basketball and hockey do not similarly come from so far out of the blue. That's because payrolls are consistent in football. Because the league shares its gigantic television revenues ($17.6 billion over eight years), all teams are capable of competing. NFL payrolls, as a rule, fall between the $50 million and $70 million mark.

In baseball, where television revenue differ widely, the New York Yankees won the World Series with an $85 million roster. The Montreal Expos, at $18 million, had no chance. In hockey, the New York Rangers are close to $60 million in payroll, compared to the expansion Atlanta Thrashers who are well under $20 million.

Huyghue, despite Rooney's concerns, doesn't believe the free-agency system will be tweaked in the offseason.

"I don't think so," Huyghue says. "The players get 63 percent of the revenues, just as we negotiated in the collective bargaining agreement. Salaries are escalating. The salary cap will continue to rise. I think the system works fine."

Young agrees. "I don't want to turn back the clock," he says. "Remember, we weren't in favor of this system, but it's the one we have right now. Our system gives hope to teams that are down.

"People in St. Louis and Detroit are tickled to death about the way things are going."

Indeed, they are.

"You don't think there's any great football being played in this league?" Detroit cornerback Bryant Westbrook asked after the Lions beat the Rams 31-27 in a wild affair on Sunday. "It's not our fault if some of the more established teams are struggling.

"All we can do is play. We don't worry about what other people think."