We should have figured something was up when Steve Mariucci didn't turn up on anyone's Super Bowl 3XV2I pregame show.

	The silence from Steve Mariucci speaks volumes. Expect Mooch to become the Lions' new head coach.

We should have, but we didn't.

We also should have figured that Marty Mornhinweg wasn't safe in Detroit even after we were told he was safe in Detroit.

We should have, but ... well, you know.

So now Mornhinweg is out despite having lost no games in the current calendar year, and Mariucci looks like he's in for four years, $15 million, give or take an evening of dinner and dancing.

And we know this because? Because the Lions and Mariucci's agent both say he hasn't been contacted to fill the vacancy.

You see, we know that football people lie slightly more often and with slightly more facility than spies. If someone hasn't been contacted, he's been contacted. If someone's not a candidate, he is.

And if a successful coach with deep blue eyes and hair big enough to hide a ferret in it isn't on TV, he's at the hiring hall waiting for a phone call he knows is coming.

This is not to say that Mariucci will absolutely, positively be the next coach of the Lions. You never know when money, ego or brain bubbles will get in the way of a logical deal.

But it's the way to bet, especially since the other alleged candidate, Dennis Green, is not nearly as well connected to general manager Matt Millen.

We are here, though, to marvel at yet another brazen whopper told by football people on a subject that doesn't really require it. And to ask why they even bother to keep lying about it when it is evident that they're not nearly as good at it as they think.

Take the Mariucci firing. Minutes after the 49ers had finished their job in Tampa as the warm-up act to the Super Bowl, both owner John York and general manager Terry Donahue spoke confidently of finding a way to extend Mariucci's contract.

A day later, York suddenly remembered that he didn't like Mariucci at all, called him in the middle of the night, Ohio time, and let him know that the jig, whatever it was, was up.

Or the unconvincing Bill Parcells I'm-not-a-candidate-in-Dallas fib. What he gained by denying it before being found out at the airport is anyone's guess, although we suspect it was just a fun fib, told while knowing the truth was about to come out anyway.

Or the Barret Robbins blow-up. Robbins had wrecked his career in Oakland, and had been dismissed from the team. Yet head coach Bill Callahan told a pool reporter that all Raiders were at the practice Robbins had missed while supposedly sampling Tijuana's day life, and then, when he was found out, said that Robbins had been sent back home to Oakland.

Only Robbins was not home, but in a hospital in San Diego, coming back down from whatever hell he had marched into.

Small stuff, but stuff that could be easily checked, and therefore stuff not worth wasting a lying opportunity on.

And there's the secret for those in the business of sports. You're allowed so many lies before people see that you're a liar, and you don't want to spend them frivolously.

You want to use your lies to protect someone's privacy in areas that can't be discovered. You want to use them on the off-chance that there is actually some competitive advantage to be had, although since most opposing coaches know how to spin a whopper, they don't trust your whoppers.

	Marty Mornhinweg was Matt Millen's man. ... Until Steve Mariucci became available.

You want to space them out so that a needed lie comes off sounding like the truths you've already told, because in the cynical world of sport, tactical sincerity is a powerful yet fragile weapon.

Thus, there was nothing to be gained from Millen telling the Detroit media that Mornhinweg would remain as coach if, as is now evident, he was whack-bait from the moment the lie about Mariucci's long-term prospects in San Francisco was detected.

And they wonder why we tend not to believe them, no matter how sincere they sound. And they wonder what happened to loyalty when it comes and goes as cheaply as Breathsavers.

In the end, though, they get over it. In this case, the Lions probably will end up with Mariucci, who was Mornhinweg's superior in San Francisco, and Mornhinweg will end up on his feet somewhere else, even if it isn't right away. Because firings in the NFL usually aren't what they seem, either.

They're just a chance to repaint the garage door on the summer home a different color, and to convince the kids that their favorite team has just changed.

And that's the truth, at least until you hear otherwise.

Ray Ratto is a columnist with the San Francisco Chronicle and a regular contributor to ESPN.com