Franchise

The drumbeat already has begun. It will be deafening by Sunday. Michael Vick is going back to Atlanta. It isn't unusual for a professional athlete to return as an opponent to the place where he made his original mark. In just the last couple of years, Philadelphia fans have welcomed Donovan McNabb, Allen Iverson, Brian Dawkins, Pat Burrell, Jayson Werth, and Simon Gagne, to name just a handful. But this - Vick returning as a superstar quarterback to face the franchise he honored and dishonored over seven tumultuous years - will be a whole different kind of story.

YOU WANT TO know what the difference is between you and me and LeSean McCoy, other than the business about McCoy having 20 touchdown this season and a spot in the Eagles' franchise record book? It is this: You and I have pored over the standings and the upcoming NFL schedules, and taken notes with a Dixon Ticonderoga No. 2 pencil and a pristine yellow legal pad, and determined that after the Giants lost their 1 p.m. game yesterday, and after the Eagles won their 4:15 p.m. game, what all of the playoff scenarios might be. But McCoy?

The Minnesota Timberwolves fired Kurt Rambis yesterday, ending more than 3 months of uncertainty and awkwardness surrounding the head coach of the worst team in the NBA last season. Rambis was 32-132 in his brief stay in Minnesota, including 17-65 this past season. David Kahn, president of basketball operations, hired Rambis in 2009 to turn around one of the league's struggling franchises. But the Wolves won only two more games this season than they did in his first season, and Kahn felt compelled to cut ties with the first coach he hand-picked to help him rebuild the Wolves.

EAGLES PRESIDENT Joe Banner acknowledged during a WIP Radio appearance yesterday that the team might need to work out a long-term deal with Michael Vick in order to have salary cap room to sign disgruntled wideout DeSean Jackson. Actually, Banner only spoke hypothetically, unwilling to address specifics while talks go on. But he agreed it might be necessary to do something with one negotiation that would leave room in another. Vick is franchised this season at $16 million. Banner also cautioned that, hypothetically, the second player could be asking for so much money, it wouldn't matter how much room you were able to create with the first player.

↓   Andy Reid After opening the season 3-1, the Eagles lost 11 of their last 12. The blame for a disastrous two seasons can be pinned on many people, but Reid is ultimately responsible for a once-proud team becoming the laughingstock of the NFL. ↑   Andy Reid This one is for the overall job. The ending was ugly, but Reid's Eagles had more good days than bad. On the eve of his official firing, he should be...

IT WAS ABOUT 30 minutes before tipoff of the Sixers' regular-season home finale Tuesday night. Rich Pickens sat in Section 108 of the Wells Fargo Center, about 30 rows from the court, wearing a vintage Bobby Jones jersey. He was virtually alone. By the start of the Sixers' 102-97 loss to the Indiana Pacers, Pickens had plenty of other fans around. It was a welcome change for Pickens, a season ticketholder for 12 years. It's been a renaissance year for the Sixers and their attempt to reconnect with their tepid fan base.

PITTSBURGH - You have to see it to bereave it. And if you do, it will make you realize just how fortunate Phillies fans have been for the last decade. The comatose state of the baseball team from the western end of Pennsylvania is one of the saddest sports stories of the 21st century. The Pittsburgh Pirates, a franchise that employed Honus Wagner, Roberto Clemente, Willie Stargell, and Danny Murtaugh, has been an unwatchable mess for nearly two decades. The team that beat the New York Yankees in an unforgettable 1960 World Series and captured two more titles by beating the Baltimore Orioles in 1971 and 1979 has now gone a major-league record 19 straight seasons without posting a winning record.

I KNOW THAT I'm one of the few people outside of the Phillies front office who believes that general manager Ruben Amaro Jr. played his hand wrong. This isn't where anyone expected the Phillies to be - not 11-12 and a rung out of the cellar in the National League East. But as frustrating as things presently are, I look at how the Phillies arrived here, and I ask myself, what could Amaro have realistically done differently? I'll get hundreds of suggestions, and if change in real-life Major League Baseball were as easy as it is in Fantasy League Baseball or arm-chair general managing, 99 percent of them would be right.

Maybe it will turn out to be no big deal. Maybe Andrew Bynum will miss November so he's at his best in May and June. Maybe Bynum just wants to be Jeff Ruland for Halloween. You are excused, however, for being skeptical about the 76ers' prize offseason acquisition. This is, after all, a city coming off two Phillies seasons held hostage by Chase Utley's knees. We have been told to remain calm and trust the team's word that all would be well. We have been bitten more than once and we're more than twice shy. Let us not forget, either: The Sixers are the franchise that never did quite recover from the trades that brought Ruland to town as the centerpiece of a post-Moses Malone retooling.

Josh Harris, majority owner of what remains of the Philadelphia 76ers, said last week that the organization is in the "advanced stages" of buying a D-League franchise. For those keeping count, that will give them two of those. There is no other way to look at the local NBA team at the moment. Getting a minor-league franchise is somewhat redundant for Harris and his merry band of amateurs, but at least a coaching change doesn't run $4.5 million in that league. That's what it cost Harris to achieve some measure of peace when Doug Collins decided to resign but wanted the final year of his contract as a parting gift.