Bill Parcells has many connections to Super Bowl participants.

HOUSTON (AP) – Skip the Bud Bowl, Lingerie Bowl and other Super Bowl spinoffs. The best secondary entertainment leading up to Sunday’s big game is playing Six Degrees of Bill Parcells.

From the Patriots’ and Panthers’ rosters to their coaching staffs, Parcells is so entwined in this Super Bowl that the best way to track all the connections is by making a game out of it.

It’s Tuna Time!

Start by looking at New England, the team Parcells coached from 1993 to 1996.

Six players he brought in are still on the squad, all of them still major contributors. So are five coaches, including head coach Bill Belichick and both his coordinators.

Ties to the Parcells coaching tree are trumped by ties to his family tree: Scott Pioli, the team’s vice president of personnel, is Parcells’ son-in-law.

On the Carolina side, the strongest link is offensive coordinator Dan Henning, whom Parcells has said is “one guy, if I call on him and I need something, I kind of feel like he’d be there for me.”

Their friendship began in 1970, when they were assistant coaches at Florida State. They were in Boston at the same time in the ’90s, with Henning coaching Boston College and Parcells running the Patriots. A few years later, Henning was on Parcells’ staff at the New York Jets.

When Parcells took over the Dallas Cowboys last January and was putting together his first staff, he opted not to try prying Henning from Carolina because he knew his pal was happy working for coach John Fox. Parcells knows Fox strictly by reputation. He likes what he sees, which makes sense since people who know them say they approach the game the same way: they like strong defenses and solid running games; they relate well to players and are excellent motivators.

They also have this in common: both were former defensive coordinators of the New York Giants who used that job as a springboard to becoming a head coach.

Fox took over a losing team and got it to the playoffs in his second year, something Parcells did with the Giants, Patriots and Jets. He topped himself this season by transforming the 5-11 Dallas Cowboys into a postseason squad in his first year.

The Panthers’ turnaround is even more impressive because Fox took a 1-15 team to the Super Bowl in two years. The last coach who came close to doing that was … you guessed it … Parcells, when he took the Jets from 1-15 to the AFC championship in his second year.

None of the other Carolina coaches is closely tied to Parcells, although general manager Marty Hurney, a former sportswriter, certainly interviewed him during his days covering the Washington Redskins.

The only Panthers player coached by Parcells is tight end Jermaine Wiggins, who spent 1999 on the New York Jets’ practice squad.

Quarterback Jake Delhomme had a chance to play for Parcells in Dallas; he went with Carolina because he felt it was a better fit.

The Cowboys were among seven teams that played New England and Carolina this season. Dallas went 1-2, getting shut out by the Patriots and splitting a pair of games against the Panthers.

When the Cowboys beat the Panthers the Sunday before Thanksgiving, Parcells teared up – the eighth win meant “you can’t call (us) losers anymore.”

The second meeting came in the first round of the playoffs. The Panthers won, and by continuing to win, they added another layer to this game-within-a-game.

Carolina is the seventh team to eliminate Parcells from the postseason. It is the fifth to make the Super Bowl; the other four all won it.

As for the other two teams that KO’d Parcells in the playoffs, one was the 1994 Cleveland Browns, coached by Bill Belichick.

If Belichick wins this game, he’d become the 12th coach to win more than one Super Bowl.

Guess who one of the others is.

AP-ES-01-30-04 2118EST