Give or take a few bucks, the men who already have been fired from their jobs as NFL coaches take with them their pride, their résumés and more than $20 million in salary still to be paid.

	Marty Schottenheimer and Daniel Snyder were all smiles when they joined forces a year ago.

The big winner here is Marty Schottenheimer, freshly defrocked in Washington but still nobody's boob. Once it became clear to the sycophants who follow Redskins' owner Daniel Snyder that Schottenheimer wasn't going to do him (or them) any good, they helped convince Snyder to smoke him a year into his four-year deal.

So he did, leaving $7.5 million still to be paid. Oh, Snyder probably tried to do the honorable thing and beat Schottenheimer out of a portion of it, but Schottenheimer (again, nobody's dunce) countered with, "How about you pay me every last dime, and we'll call it even."

Leverage while being fired -- now that's power.

But that's the beauty of the smart businessman as coach. He knows that he could be fired yesterday, might be fired today and surely will be fired tomorrow, no matter what his contract says, so he might as well make the contract contain lots of extraneous zeros.

Now do you understand why coaches push for extensions? They may not buy any more time, but they will buy, well, things you can buy.

And if that seems wrong to you, well, wake up and smell the muffin burning, you cheap hyena. This is the owner's mistake, after all, and he ought to be made to pay with his petty cash drawer.

Again, Schottenheimer. Now it was evident to those of us in the media that his marriage to Snyder was doomed from the start, largely because as regards his football team, he has the attention span of a salamander. He has itches, and the money to scratch them until a new itch crops up.

So, when the Redskins finished an improbable 8-8, Snyder thought he'd vote his stock and urge Schottenheimer to change his staff. Schottenheimer, knowing he was going to be fired for something else down the road anyway and knowing all the more that he had $7.5 million coming no matter what he did or who he did it to, declined.

So he got fired. So he gets paid. And they say America is going to hell in a handbasket.

To his credit (or at least to his lawyers' credit), Snyder didn't quibble. He didn't want Schottenheimer, he knew he had to pay, and he is. Hey, there's no salary cap against impulse buying on the management level.

But maybe there should be. Maybe the salary cap should be jacked up to, say, $75 million or so to cover coaches' salaries, and let the owners have to think twice before playing Look Who I Bought with their owner friends.

Maybe Danny The Lad should have to face himself in the mirror and say, "Look, stupid, you hired him, now you have to live with him." Or, in the alternative, "Look, stupid, you know you're going to fire him in a year anyway, so why bother?"

But we know that won't happen. For one thing, Snyder prefers he be referred to as Mister Snyder. This beats being referred to as Mister Stupid, but we digress.

The truth here is that coaches have come to recognize the vulnerability of their positions, and that security can no longer be bought. You work for Danny the Lad, or Dean Spanos in San Diego, or Billy Bidwill in Arizona, or Billy Ford in Detroit, you don't work long.

So you do it for the money, and hope to last long enough to get one of those blowhard network talking-head jobs, making fun of the coaches you left behind and who will soon be catching up with you.

It also encourages nomad coaches like Schottenheimer, or Bill (I'm Done With Coaching Forever, Or Until Next Year, Whichever Comes First) Parcells. Thus, fans who complain they can't remember who plays on what team any more can expand their bitching to include the headset jockeys who try to look in total command but who in fact are just temps who look lousy in a skirt.

Now that's not good for the game, even if it does lively up a Tuesday in January.

Then again, what are we worried about? It's not our $20 million. It's not our job. These are just coaches, and coaches know what the deal is, now more than ever.

Namely, get it up front, get it in cash, or get it in writing. Then you can worry about whether to go with the nickel defense or the dime package.

Hey, it's only money.

Ray Ratto of the San Francisco Chronicle is a regular contributor to ESPN.com.