"If you keep your old tricks, you lose the picks.” He didn’t put it quite that way, but that’s the gist of Johnny Cochran’s thinking toward the NFL’s hiring practices.

O.J.’s lawyer has written a letter to the commissioner, Paul Tagliabue, that amounts to a threat. Bring more minority coaches and front-office personnel into the league, Cochran says, or I’ll slap a lawsuit on you faster than one of your quarterbacks can call an audible at the line of scrimmage.

One of the planks of Cochran’s plan might inspire a couplet, like the one above, for which the noted attorney is renowned. It calls for tying a team’s draft choices to its record on minority hiring.

Regardless of what you may think of his plan, Cochran has a point. And it’s borne out by a new study on black coaches in the NFL that was released just last week. The study concludes that African American coaches were last to be hired and first to be fired, and when you look at the numbers, it’s hard to disagree with at least the former contention.

Seventy percent of the players in the league are black, but only 6 percent (two out of 32) of the coaches. Only 28 percent of the offensive and defensive coordinator positions are held by African Americans.

The NFL says it is making progress. In 1980, there were only 14 black coaches (including assistant coaches) throughout the league. By 1997 that number had risen more than sevenfold, to 103. Today it stands at 154. With so many more now available as candidates—or at least compiling the experience that will make them viable candidates—it stands to reason that many more African Americans will begin receiving jobs as head coaches.

Why, then—as Cochran will quickly point out—were blacks chosen only twice to fill the NFL’s last 22 coaching vacancies? It’s a fair question.

For every black coach like Indianapolis’ Tony Dungy—whose experience and performance seem to ensure that he will never be without a top job somewhere—several others are curiously passed over. It’s not surprising that the Minnesota Vikings fired Dennis Green last winter; following that team’s disappointing mark, a coach of any color would likely have been shown the exit. What’s puzzling, however, is that given Green’s demonstrable ability and years of success with the Vikings, no other coachless team rushed in to swoop him up.

As Green’s replacement, the Vikings hired Mike Tice. Among the highly successful, highly qualified guys not offered the job was Sherman Lewis, who not only had once worked for the Vikings but to whom Tice, a former position coach, had reported.

Go figure also why Marvin Lewis is still a defensive coordinator. At Baltimore, he built and oversaw a unit that became the most feared in the entire league. Media Geniuses considered him a shoe-in for any of the next head coaching jobs that came open. But the best offer he could get last year was to make a lateral move (though for more money) to Washington.

Yet if the NFL’s sorry track record for hiring minority coaches calls for action, I’m not convinced it’s actionable—or that lawsuits would even promote the desirable goal of unforced integration.

For one thing, the NFL is not the Montgomery public transit system or the public schools of Des Moines or a Mississippi polling place. There is no constitutionally guaranteed right to coach in the NFL or to enjoy equal protection from some of the more fossiliferous owners around the league. No matter how much the disparity between black and white head coaches gives off a nasty whiff of racism, resorting to the courts for remedies in a case like this in the long run can only work against genuine civil rights causes where legal action is entirely appropriate.

For another thing, forcing team owners to do the right thing risks a phenomenon that our society increasingly must deal with: an affirmative action backlash. While hiring and admissions preferences have successfully (and laudably) brought empowerment to minorities faster than it would have occurred otherwise, it has also unfortunately (and almost inevitably) led many whites—and not just the incorrigible racists—to trade old prejudices for new ones.

When they see persons of color in high-ranking or even mid-level positions, these whites often assume the job-holder required help to attain that position. Under the kind of system Cochran proposes, there would always be questions about how an African American coach or general manager got his job. For some, there would always be reason to wonder—where now there is none—whether a coach like Dungy or a G.M. like Baltimore’s Ozzie Newsome was hired solely because the team’s owner regarded him as the best person for the position.

Contrast that scenario with baseball, which is working to overcome a far more burdensome history of institutional racism. Since baseball’s coaching color barrier was broken earlier, we can observe more of the progress of its slow evolution than with football. The results have been interesting.

While the number of white managers is almost as disproportionately high as with NFL head coaches, there also is one notable distinction. Within a system that combines meritocracy with good-ole-boy networking, baseball has achieved a certain color blindness when it comes to minority managers.

Ask a knowledgeable fan, for example, to talk about Dusty Baker, and the subject of his skin color probably won’t even come up; instead, you’ll hear how Baker, the game’s best manager, gets more from his teams’ talent than anyone else. Similarly, no one describes Felipé Alou as a “black” manager, just an excellent one. Same with Frank Robinson, who was tabbed to run the Montreal Expos this year, and with Don Baylor.

As a society, we cannot afford to wait passively when discrimination affects basic civil rights. But NFL coaching is a different story, and Johnny Cochran would serve everyone well, particularly his intended beneficiaries, to note that difference. In this case, it may be that prosecuting a war through moral suasion and patience will prove more effective than winning a few skirmishes through litigation.

Bad and Badder

A couple of weeks ago, I wrote that it was time to admit the Titans were a mediocre football team. Now, I’ve realized that an apology is in order—to all the genuinely mediocre teams in the NFL.

At least to judge from the way the Titans have performed over their last 10 quarters, mediocrity is the impossible dream, the unreachable star. Two Sundays ago, they surrendered 52 points to a strong Oakland team. Frequently, they looked like they didn’t even belong on the same field with the Raiders.

Then, last weekend, the Titans showed they could also be outclassed by a struggling team, the Washington Redskins, who visited upon their heads a 31-14 dope-slapping. Not once but twice against Steve Spurrier’s ’Skins, no Titan was within 20 yards of the recipient of a TD pass. That’s not an easy thing to do when the play starts only 20 yards or so from the end zone.

Tennessee’s lowly 1-4 start might not be reason to panic if we could reasonably expect much improvement. After all, they’re situated in what may be the NFL’s weakest division. (Their 7-9 record last year led the new AFC South and earned Bud’s boys a playoff spot.) It’s a long season. A 9-2 or 8-3 finish might well be enough for a divisional crown.

But the Titans are showing no sign of such a turnaround. Heretofore, many fans have wondered aloud, “What’s wrong with the Titans?” Now, it’s fair to at least consider a once inconceivable, frightening possibility: Maybe their recent performances, though abundantly errant, aren’t aberrant. Maybe this is what we should expect for the rest of the year.

After all, they’ve been remarkably consistent. They can’t run, can’t defend the pass, can’t stop committing dumb penalties before and after the snap and can’t keep fledgling quarterbacks from making names for themselves.

Ordinarily, it would be reasonable to expect that the Titans are due for a decent showing this weekend, and surprising Jacksonville is due for a letdown. Yet, even at home, only the homeriest homer should expect a W for Tennessee.

Bud Adams’ eye-opening comment that his team is being outcoached may or not be correct. But, week after week, they are being outplayed, and no end is in sight.

Jaguars 27, Titans 20

How it looks from the La-Z-Boy

Georgia 24, Tennessee 21

On the one hand, the fractious Vols should draw energy from their dramatic, six-overtime win against Arkansas. On the other, that game revealed an offense that still sputters and a defense still prone to near-fatal lapses.

Georgia will be hard pressed to match the emotional high that carried them to victory at Alabama. But the Dogs are for real and comfortably ensconced between the hedges.>

Vanderbilt 24, MTSU 17

When the season began, many Vandy faithful had already conceded this game to MTSU. Now, those bets are off. The Blue Raiders are reeling at 0-5. Even without starting QB Jay Cutler, who couldn’t outrun a couple of campus cops (not a promising sign), the Commodores have enough confidence and other weapons to prevail.

Florida 26, LSU 17

Arkansas 20, Auburn 17

Kentucky 31, South Carolina 20

Miami 37, Florida St. 17

Notre Dame 20, Pittsburgh 14

Broncos 27, Dolphins 23

Patriots 24, Packers 21