Meanwhile, here in What The Hell Central, things are back to normal.

The successful coach in San Francisco who was going to Tampa to find his bliss at the feet of the Brothers Glazer, Chuckles and Slappy, is staying. The successful coach in Oakland who wasn't going to Tampa because he had resigned himself to serving at the feet of Stick 'Em Up Al Davis, now is.

	Chuckles and Slappy -- or is it Slappy and Chuckles? -- finally got the coach they wanted all ... well, they finally got a coach.

It all makes a man doubt his faith in a supreme being and realize that life, especially life in the NFL, is basically ants on a dessert cart.

How Jon Gruden ended up getting a five-year, $17.5 million contract in Tampa, though considerably less than a reported seven-year $42 million deal that was supposed to go to Steve Mariucci, is a book, pure and simple. Call it "Weekend On The Brink."

You'd like to think that Mariucci and Gruden conspired to work a great goof on all of us, including their two employers. Mariucci had gone to Tampa to talk various forms of turkey with the Glazer Boys. Gruden had gone to watch the Golden State Warriors lose to Atlanta Sunday night. Life was weird, but ordered.

Suddenly, to quote the Zen master Madden, "BOOM!" Somehow, and with nobody suspecting a thing, Chuckles and Slappy had laid out a sumptuous spread not in front of Mariucci, but Al Davis, enough to make the wily old cheese get rid of Gruden, the chief cause of that painful rash he has been scratching since the end of November.

What The Hell Central, indeed.

In time, the principals will spit out a generally agreed-upon version of the truth, finding out how it all went right and into the wall in the space of a day and a night. But until they get their stories straight, we are left only to marvel at the sureness, swiftness and utter unpredictability of a story infinitely more entertaining than the Parcells-Belichick Danse Macabre of two years ago.

Two teams, each diametrically opposed to the existence of the other, merge in a bizarre love triangle with gentlemen whose riches long outpaced their sense. The two teams, vaguely unhappy with their successful coaches, do business with a third team, which already had fired its own successful coach and couldn't coax a successful ex-coach out of his easy chair.

I dare you to understand it, even after the boiler-plate explanations are expelled.

We do, however, know the practical results of this train wreck of interests.

The Glazers, dismissed as bungling dopes only 10 days ago for not closing the Gruden deal after having Bill Parcells yank them along for 10 days before that, suddenly look more purposeful and less baffled by the inner workings of the National Football League.

Davis rids himself of Gruden, for whom he had developed a healthy lack of enjoyment as the style he had helped develop was turned into a style of exigencies and make-dos. Gruden wanted to win. Davis wanted to win only his way. Davis signs the checks. Voila!

	It looks like Al Davis held out for what he wanted from the Bucs.

Plus, Davis collects a healthy booty from the Bucs, and no, we are not necessarily referring to Warren Sapp. Tampa Bay sources said the team would announce what it was giving the Raiders on Wednesday, but most educated sources -- you know, the people who were sure Mariucci would be taking the Tampa job -- think Sapp will be part of that package. ESPN's Sal Paolantonio, however, reports that only draft picks are included in the deal.

Gruden gets out from under Al's callused thumb, makes about three times as much salary and has slightly more job security than he would have had in Oakland.

Mariucci loses his leverage, such as it was, and returns to San Francisco, where his direct superiors, Terry Donahue and Bill Walsh, will continue to support him somewhere between 30 and 40 percent of the time, and Terrell Owens will roll grenades beneath his feet in hopes of making La Mooch dance.

The 49ers, in turn, still have a coach for whom they are largely lukewarm, despite the fact that he has taken them from aging, slow and cap-strangled to young, quick and cap-strangled. He has gone from 13 wins to 12 to four to six and back to 12 again, all in five years. By any sensible reading of the facts, he has been a success.

Of course, "sensible reading of the facts" and what fans and management think of a coach rarely jibe. This is something Gruden will discover in short enough order in Tampa, but that's another tale for another time.

Beyond that, we'll have to wade through the Classics Illustrated version of this story before the truth actually leaks out. Frankly, what we see here is a "I Love Lucy" skit in which everyone ends up playing Vivian Vance -- wondering just how Lucy ended up in a wine vat throwing grapes at an Italian peasant woman.

It would, after all, be in keeping with life here in What The Hell Central, where nothing is as it seems, ever did, or ever will.

You know, like figure skating, only with a seltzer-down-your-pants chaser.

Ray Ratto is a columnist with the San Francisco Chronicle