Her face was rendered brick red by the relentless Orlando sun and she was telling anyone within earshot that she really, really, really needed a bottle of water. But despite the obvious distress, 15-year-old Tara Barry wasn't about to relinquish her prime-time spot behind a bull rope barricade at the Disney Wide World of Sports complex.

Along with nearly 12,000 other NFL fans she had watched the Tampa Bay Buccaneers and Miami Dolphins work through two practices on a Saturday earlier this month, and had abandoned her seat in the covered portion of the bleachers 30 minutes before the afternoon session would end, just to queue up with the legion of hero worshippers seeking autographs.

	Steve Spurrier and Jon Gruden are two of the NFL's highest profile coaches.

She was, for sure, a young lady on a mission. The subject of her quest, as she stood, sweltering, clutching a Buccaneers pennant in one hand and a Sharpie marker in the other, was as obvious as the message on her sweat-stained gray T-shirt. "Got Gruden?" it read.

Not yet, she didn't, but within the hour Barry was shrieking as the Tampa Bay coach scrawled his name for her among those of many of his players. It was, at least for Tara Barry, a memory to die for and, if her reaction was any indication, the close encounter with Gruden was more than just your normal, throwaway Kodak moment.

Then again, it offered a graphic snapshot of the wacky NFL-coach-as-rock-star era in which the league now finds itself. And if Gruden has risen to the level of matinee idol in the hearts of some Bucs fans, he is hardly alone in achieving a status that transcends what used to be the historically delineated boundaries of the job.

A few hundred years ago, Shakespeare opined that "the play's the thing." During the 1982 work stoppage, veterans picketed training complexes, toting signs that reminded people "The players are the game." Twenty years later, however, the message is distinctly different. It is a coach's league now and anyone who suggests otherwise is out of touch with the latest paradigm.

If a 15-year-old coaching groupie in Orlando can figure out which way the pendulum has swung, it ought to be clear to everyone, right? The reaction to Gruden's arrival -- his unmistakable rubber mug is plastered on everything from T-shirts, to "Chuckie" dolls whose eyes flash red, to key chains -- may be a bit extreme. But it also manifests the NFL's new reality.

To sell your team, you'd better be able to sell the coach to the public, and he had better be able to connect to his players.

"People have always talked about how a manager in baseball makes such a difference," said Indianapolis Colts owner Jim Irsay earlier this spring. "And there was a time when the NBA was known as a so-called 'coach's league.' But I think what's going on in the NFL, with the salaries being paid and the focus on the coaches, there is no doubt about the direction we have gone. You have to believe that (owners) now feel the coach makes the difference."

The events of just the past seven months certainly reinforce that notion: The Bucs surrendered four high-round draft choices, including two first-round selections, to the Oakland Raiders to free Gruden from the final year of his contract. Washington owner Daniel Snyder dumped Marty Schottenheimer after one season, and despite an 8-3 finish in 2001, to sign Steve Spurrier to a contract that pays the coach a record $5 million per year. Minnesota owner Red McCombs went to the other end of the financial spectrum with coach Mike Tice, but believed the Vikings needed a fresh approach after the reign of the deposed Dennis Green.

Irsay paid more than he has for any coach in franchise history to secure Tony Dungy's services. Although the Saints dumped his biggest patron in general manager Randy Mueller, the team retained coach Jim Haslett with a long-term contract extension and ceded him considerably more power.

Yeah, the players may still be the game, but it's the head coaches who've got game now. Beyond game, they've also got more money, more entrée, more sway, more control of their own destiny and clearly more profile.

Time was when coaches were concerned primarily with X's and O's. Now the overriding focus is the dollar sign.

The transfer of power, of course, was not promulgated overnight. After all, when he was winning Super Bowl titles with the Green Bay Packers, coach Vince Lombardi was one of the most recognizable figures in the country. If the "Q-factor" had existed then, Lombardi would have enjoyed more profile than the president. His contemporary and friend and rival, Tom Landry of the Dallas Cowboys, could be identified even in a darkened room because of his trademark hat and chiseled silhouette.

But for nearly three decades, as the NFL rose in popularity, it was the star players who eventually commanded the spotlight. The era of free agency signaled that the klieg lights would turn back to the coaches, since teaching became the priority in a league with wholesale annual turnover, and now the coaches are clearly center stage.

"The guy at the top (of your team) has to fill a lot of functions," said Bob McNair, owner of the expansion Houston Texans. "Most important, he has to be a good football coach. But in this era, coaches are more out front for you. They've got (public relations) responsibilities their successors did not have to shoulder. There are all manners of outside elements with which they deal. So they had better be good at a lot of things. My exposure is more limited than most (owners) but, definitely, the head coaching position has grown dramatically in importance."

	“	People have always talked about how a manager in baseball makes such a difference. And there was a time when the NBA was known as a so-called 'coach's league.' But I think what's going on in the NFL, with the salaries being paid and the focus on the coaches, there is no doubt about the direction we have gone. You have to believe that (owners) now feel the coach makes the difference. ”
		— Jim Irsay, Colts owner

And in other areas as well.

Although average coaching tenure has been diminished as more owners seek immediate gratification -- excluding Texans sideline boss Dom Capers, the 31 other head coaches have been with their current teams for an average of just 2.5 seasons, and only four have more than seven years tenure with their current franchises -- the pay scale has spiraled upward exponentially.

The average salary for a head coach, thanks in part to deals like the one that Spurrier signed, is just shy of $3 million. That is nearly triple the average of a decade ago and the number, according to league sources, has doubled just in the last six seasons. In terms of front office clout, more than half of the NFL's head coaches now have near-absolute control on football decisions, key elements like the draft, trades and roster composition. All but three head coaches have total control over staffing.

"We're seeing more of the coach-and-CEO type situations now," said former Dallas head coach Barry Switzer. "The buck stops at the coach's desk more and more now. If a (head coach) doesn't want to be pushed out front by the owner, he'd better find himself another job."

Certainly in the circus that became the Tampa Bay head coaching search, after the dismissal of Dungy, management was seeking not only a man who could handle on-field affairs, but one who also possessed personality and some off-field cache. To the Glazer Family, the franchise needed more than a guy well-practiced as the grease board, like defensive guru Marvin Lewis, but a man who could stir passions, even if disparately.

Steve Mariucci, pursued ardently by the Bucs, would have been a very nice fit. But the absolute perfect dovetail was Gruden. Not only can he scheme with the best of them but, at age 39, he is pliable enough to realize that part of his job entails public relations as well. And so, when he poses for pictures with a bevy of fans, accommodates three of four national writers visiting his practice, or signs autographs, it is all part of the new job description.

Then again, Gruden has been around the game long enough to know that some of the old what-have-you-done-for-me-lately conventions still apply. He can sign thousands of autographs, but unless he wins about a dozen games in '02, he might be deemed a failure in his first year on the new job.

And that's where the old-fashioned coaching comes in, because the name of the game remains winning, and the pressures are now unparalleled. That is why, for the most part, the league has become so much a coach's domain.

Recent history has indicated that, while personnel remains the biggest key to winning, systems can also dictate success. Put any other head coach on the sideline in Washington, for instance, and let's see how effective quarterback Danny Wuerffel, who has sputtered under every other NFL coach he's had, would be.

"When a (coach) draws it up on the board, and then you go out on the field and it works just like he diagrammed it, you can't help but believe," allowed Washington Redskins offensive tackle Jon Jansen. "I think what we see now in coaches is, these guys have their fingerprints on every facet of the game. It's a game where coaches are pulling the strings, orchestrating stuff more than they used to, having a bigger role in everything."

The game has become one where the coach dictates the script, screams out the lines when his actors lose focus, re-writes scenes over the course of the rehearsals, hires and fires the rank-and-file. There was a time not too long ago when people wondered aloud if a coach should absorb all the blame for a team's lousy performance. But that was a time when coaches worked with constraints, didn't enjoy the freedom they now do, didn't always possess the baton of leadership.

In most NFL precincts now, though, the coach is conductor. And when the orchestra hits a sour note, the blame game justifiably starts at the top of the pecking order. Bill Parcells used to suggest that, if he was going to cook the meal, he should be permitted to shop for the groceries. One reason Parcells could yet be back on the sidelines at some point in the future is because the head coaches are running the entire super market in so many places now.

"For years," said one AFC owner, "coaches always bitched about how they couldn't impact their own fates. Given the trend of the last few years, we haven't heard that excuse lately."

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