It's August, and that means the media bulge with news of NFL training camps. Some of the same papers now running daily two- or four-page spreads about the local team will have throttled back to news-brief items by midseason, when bright promise has turned to 3-8 in the standings. August is Peter Pan time, when any fan may believe anything he or she wishes about a team's prospects. By Halloween half the league's faithful will know the Super Bowl is out for their favorites yet again, and by Thanksgiving, in many cities people will want to scream when they hear the name of their cellar-dwelling team. But August is the month of dreams. So dream away and enjoy it before the playing starts and spoils everything.

What follows is the Tuesday Morning Quarterback book of dreams for the upcoming season. In a shocking departure from tradition, this year's predicted win-loss columns add up to 248, the total number of games; that is, TMQ predicts finishes that are mathematically possible. But for heaven's sake, don't let that make you think any of the predictions are right. While other football columns and tout sheets make vague promises, Tuesday Morning Quarterback absolutely guarantees his predictions will be wrong. In fact, this year's column motto is:

All Predictions Wrong or Your Money Back.

Slate is free, get it? See, if by chance a prediction was actually right, then you would receive—oh, never mind.

Division Predictions: It's a Darwinian world for division winners. From 1997 to 2000, only two division winners repeated from the previous season, of 18 possible chances. Thus of last season's winners—Miami, Tennessee, Oakland, New Orleans, Minnesota, and Jersey/A—TMQ predicts only one will repeat. But I have no idea which one it will be.

Super Bowl Winner: In each of the last two seasons, the dance has gone to a team so lightly regarded by the league's hype experts that it was not slated a Monday night game in the year of its triumph. The Rams in 1999 and the Ravens in 2000 were both MNF-free and both the last gentlemen standing.

Thus, TMQ predicts that the team goin' to Disney World this winter will come from among those that did not make the Monday Night Football cut: Arizona, Atlanta, Buffalo, Carolina, Chicago, Cincinnati, Cleveland, Kansas City, New England, San Diego, and Seattle. Yes, this is a sorry group, but if the league brain trust thinks these teams are losers, one of them must be good. Hype note: Despite bad seasons in 2000 and every reason to expect worse in 2001, Dallas and Jax did make it to MNF. Which assures they will be cover-your-eyes awful.

Actual Predicted Final Score: There will be a game with a final of 13-9, and you will wish you hadn't watched it.

Team Predictions

Arizona(Caution: May Contain Football-Like Substance) Cardinals. The Cards have one playoff win in the last 53 years, draw the league's smallest crowds, boast seven consecutive coaches with losing records, and last season stumbled in 3-13. What's not to like? Consider this example of ongoing folly. Starting in the mid-1990s, the Cardinals invested high draft picks in DLs, hoping to assemble the league's fiercest defensive line: Top-10 choices were spent on Eric Swann, Simeon Rice, and Andre Wadsworth. Now Swann is out of football, Rice is trying to resurrect his career in Tampa, Wadsworth is a perennially injured malcontent, and the AZ defensive line is so bad that if you threw some water on, it could qualify for federal disaster aid. Starting in the late 1990s, the Cardinals invested high draft picks in OLs, including the No. 2 pick overall in 2001, hoping to assemble the league's fiercest offense line. TMQ bets that this year the Arizona offensive line will be a disaster, too. Finish 4-12.