When Shad Khan arrived in Texas Wednesday morning, he was the star attraction. His every move at the NFL owners meeting was documented and then some. There were nearly a dozen photographers catching glimpses of Khan as he moved through the halls of the Four Seasons hotel. The celebrity of being an NFL owner is something new for most of the men who move into that club. I’m not sure Khan was used to having his picture taken as he exited the men’s room.

Wayne Weaver’s arrival signaled the beginning of the final chapter of his ownership of the Jaguars. If he was with mixed emotions about selling the team he had settled that back home. But that doesn’t mean selling the team wasn’t bittersweet. “I’ve used that word a lot this week,” Weaver told me in the hallway outside the banquet room where his fellow owners would soon approve the sale to Shad Khan. “It’s hard to give up the NFL, but it’s time. And I’ve found the right family to continue the Jaguars legacy in Jacksonville.”

As the rest of the owners convened for their regular meeting, the first slot on the agenda was the sale of the Jaguars and approving Khan as the new owner. It didn’t take long.

NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell introduced Weaver and Khan at a mid-day press conference after Khan’s confirmation. He related that when Khan’s application was presented to the full membership he opened the floor to questions. “And there were none,” the commissioner outlined.

So they voted, 32-0 in favor or the sale.

Cowboys owner Jerry Jones had nothing but high praise for both Wayne Weaver the Shad Khan. “Anytime would be too soon for me” Jones said when asked about Weaver’s planned departure. “Wayne has been a great partner both as an owner in the room and for the Jaguars. We’ll miss him, for sure.” Having said that, Jones was quick to praise Shad Khan as an owner calling him a “significant owner when you think of his financial strength.”

The interaction between Weaver and Khan shows a mutual respect for each other’s accomplishments and a gratitude to have found each other for this deal: Weaver to exit with his legacy intact, Khan to take over with a commitment to the same values Weaver brought to the table as the Jaguars owner 18 years ago.

“I want the fans in Jacksonville to know I’m here, reporting for duty,” Khan said during his prepared remarks. “Let the fun begin.”

He’s saying the right things and seems to want to make it work in Jacksonville. He’s obviously excited about owning the team and getting started, assuring fans he’s in it for the long haul.

“It should be a virtuous circle,” the new Jaguars owner told me during our interview on the six o’clock news. “We support the fans and the fans support us. Everybody wins.”

Sure sounds great.

On a team with Vince Lombardi and Tom Landry as the coordinators, you might think the head coach would operate in relative obscurity. But Jim Lee Howell was well respected as the Head Coach of the New York Giants, getting them into the NFL Championship game three times in his seven years as head coach.

In the 1990’s, when asked about the defensive prowess of his Gators football team, then Head Coach Steve Spurrier always said, “You’ll have to ask coach Stoops,” referring to Defensive Coordinator Bob Stoops. Current Gators Head Coach Will Muschamp did the same last week when asked about the offense, deferring to Charlie Weis as the offensive coordinator.

So when for a few weeks now Jaguars Head Coach Jack Del Rio has referenced Dirk Koetter, the offensive coordinator when asked offensive questions, I shouldn’t have been surprised. But I still don’t have to like it.

No matter what your specialty, the head coach is just that, as Del Rio has reminded us over the years, a coach of all phases of the game and generally the face and the voice of the franchise. Early in the 2011 season, Del Rio said he’d like to see the offense “mix it up a little bit” yet didn’t do anything about it while the game was going on. He admitted the plays go through him via his headset on the sideline, but he didn’t speak up.

After Sunday’s Jaguars loss to the Texans at home Del Rio gave us some insight as to how things work, or don’t work, in the Jaguars hierarchy.

Down by a touchdown, Luke McCown (who had replaced an ineffective Blaine Gabbert at quarterback) completed a third down pass for 25 yards to Marcedes Lewis brining up a 4th and two with just over a minute to play. With one timeout left, it seemed that would be the logical thing to use at that time. Get everybody together, call your best two-yard play and get the first down. But instead the Jaguars ran to the line of scrimmage and threw a quick slant to Mike Thomas that fell incomplete and the game was over.

More than a minute to play and the clock runs out with the Jaguars holding a timeout in their pocket.

“We had a play we liked and the coverage we expected, we just didn’t execute,” said McCown in a quiet Jaguars locker room. And that’s what you expect the quarterback to say. But when asked about it, Del Rio said, “I asked Dirk if we wanted a time out there and he said no, so we didn’t call it.”

So at the most crucial point of the game, the head coach relinquishes the decision making to one of his assistants? That’s why I was trying to give Jack an out when I asked him if he had made the decision to change quarterbacks in concert with Koetter. “No. I did,” Del Rio quickly answered. Which makes no sense at the most basic “Who’s in charge” level.

The head coach let’s the assistant decide if they’re calling a time out yet unilaterally changes quarterbacks? The head coach has to be the final arbiter of any kind of decision like that and even if he’s not he can’t sluff it off on one of his assistants. You’re on the sidelines; you have to have a feel for what’s going on in the game. There’s not a person in the stadium that wasn’t thinking, “Nice play. OK, call a time out here and get organized to get the first down.”

Maybe they were trying to catch Houston off-guard, maybe there are a thousand reasons not to call time out.

I just wanted to hear one.

A friend of mine was sitting in a sports bar during a recent Jaguars road game with some “real” Jaguars fans. Not just casual observers but guys who have been supporters of the franchise since the beginning. When the opposition took the lead, my friend was at first appalled and then amazed when these fans were rooting for the enemy to win and win big.

Why?

“Because we’ll sacrifice this season to get rid of Jack Del Rio,” was the quick response.

And that’s how it goes in the NFL.

Coaches have a shelf life in the league. Long tenured coaches are a rarity anymore. Don Shula, Chuck Noll, Tom Landry, all legendary coaches who’s stays in Miami, Pittsburgh and Dallas spanned decades are now the products of a bygone era. They won, sure, but they also lost. And that was acceptable by their owners who had confidence that they were “rebuilding” and would make the team competitive in the near future. Again. And they were right. Partially because of the unlimited money that owners could put into their clubs and partially because those guys were actually great coaches. Nobody called for their jobs. Players and fans respected what they could do and owners were sometimes the object of scorn for being “cheap” or “lazy.”

That all changed with the salary cap. It leveled the playing field for just about everybody when it comes to acquiring players (maybe not when it comes to making money) so owners have a shorter attention span and less patience when it comes to winning. They want results and based on how teams are built now, about 5 years is the time frame for a coach to prove whether he can produce a champion or not.

Right about that time in Del Rio’s tenure, the Jaguars looked to be an ascending team. A road playoff win at Pittsburgh and an emerging quarterback looked to be the building blocks for a championship run. Del Rio and David Garrard were rewarded for what seemed to be their potential with new contracts. Which never panned out. Garrard never got any better and the Jaguars free-agent moves backfired. Having gone from good to very good, the team never got to great and started to back up.

“A coach rarely survives a quarterback change (Leftwich) or a retooling of the roster once let alone twice,” Del Rio admitted before the 2011 season. But in fact, Jack had done just that. “We’re going to be a good team,” he declared more than once in the preseason and into the regular season, saying it with such confidence that it was hard not to believe that he really believed it. Little things, most self inflicted, kept the Jaguars from being somewhere near .500 early in the season and as the team’s won-loss record became more lopsided, the calls for Del Rio’s job got louder.

In the end, it’s Wayne Weaver’s call regarding Del Rio’s future. While Weaver can be emotional, he’s very measured before making any kind of major personnel move. He’s actually concerned about the people working for him. Contrary to some opinions, Weaver is not cheap. And he wants to win. He also wants to put people in the stands and generate some excitement for his team.

Del Rio isn’t doing any of that. It’s a results oriented league. And if he’s not winning, “potential” doesn’t keep any head coach on the sidelines in the NFL.

After 6 weeks of camp and exhibition games, practices and meetings it was pretty clear that Luke McCown had played his way into the mix as the best quarterback on the Jaguars roster. McCown had produced when he was on the field in games, he was sharp in practices and the guys on the team liked his football acumen. “Ball out” is his nickname for how he makes quick decisions and is willing to throw into tight spots.

That left the Jaguars management and coaching staff with a dilemma: What to do with Luke McCown?

It didn’t make sense to sit him on the bench and with the heir apparent in the wings and just waiting to play. He was worth a draft pick if they wanted to trade him but the dilemma was complicated by the poor play of the incumbent starter, David Garrard.

Head Coach Jack Del Rio told us going into the third exhibition game that “now would be a good time” for the quarterback and the offense to start showing some production. Del Rio had met with Garrard earlier to encourage him to pick up the tempo and “get it going” since David had struggled from the beginning of camp.

But that never happened.

So faced with that decision, and knowing that Blaine Gabbert was going to be your starter at some point either sooner or later, Garrard became the expendable player. They knew the upside on Garrard. He had reached the pinnacle of his ability and what that produced was average results in the NFL.

It’s hard to say why he plateaued out so quickly after signing a new contract following the 2007 season but for a guy who was talked about in the next breath after Tom Brady and Peyton Manning, he never elevated his game again. Maybe he was satisfied after he “got his money” or maybe he started to believe he was better just because everybody said he was next in line. But whatever it was, the Jaguars couldn’t count on him getting any better;

With a $9 million price tag the Jaguars couldn’t sit him on the bench, so they cut him. It wasn’t about money, or they’d have never let Garrard take the field in the pre-season. They had the perfect excuse when he strained his back in practice and missed the opener. If he had gotten hurt playing in an exhibition, they’d been on the hook for $9 million and out a quarterback.

So McCown earns the starting spot and plays well enough to beat the Tennessee Titans in game one of the regular season. “He’s not ready,” is the response given when asked about Gabbert’s debut in the NFL.

One thing’s for sure again in 2011 on offense for the Jaguars: they’re not going to the playoffs through the quarterback position. The QB wasn’t going to get them into the post-season but he could keep them from getting there. They’re a run-first; stop the run team that wants Maurice Jones Drew to handle the ball about 25 times a game among their 35 or so rushes.

In a battle for the starting QB job in Tampa Bay, Luke McCown lost out to Byron Leftwich. That made him expendable in Tampa and the Jaguars acquired him for a 7th round pick. The rap on McCown was that he was skittish and inconsistent. He didn’t show any of that in his time in Jacksonville: until Sunday against the Jets. When things starting going downhill, they snowballed and got worse. McCown reverted to the player they thought he was in Tampa when they got rid of him.

Which brings us to the dawning to a new era in Jaguars history: The Gabbert era.

If you’re going to run the offense the Jaguars run, handing it off and throwing safe bubble screens and slants, then let the rookie do it. The Jaguars believed Gabbert was the best player in the draft last year. They just happened to get him with the 10th pick. It was evident when he went in the game last Sunday against the Jets, albeit a bit late, that he can play. He has quick feet, a quick release, makes fast decisions and can fire it. He didn’t like getting hit in the backfield but who does?

So put Gabbert in the game.

If he gets overwhelmed, sit him down for a couple of weeks. But put him in the game and see what he can do. It’ll create an ancillary excitement about a season that’s already been written off as average at best.

He’s a first round pick. Let him play like one.

It’s about the quarterback.

Always will be.

It’s the most important position in sports.

The only other one in the discussion is starting pitcher and they only get the ball every four or five days. The QB touches the ball on every offensive play, is the leader and the manager and has to be among the best players, and athletes on his own team to be effective.

My friend Matt Robinson, a starter at Georgia and in the NFL with New York and Denver and the USFL here in Jacksonville marveled at the power of the quarterback when he stepped into his first NFL huddle.

“I’d always just played the game and played my position. But in the NFL, I stepped into the huddle and guys who were 10, 15 years older than me were just waiting for instructions. It didn’t matter who I was. I was the quarterback!”

Watch Tom Brady on the sidelines or go back a few years and watch Troy Aikman interact with his teammates. Both are part cheerleader, part psychologist, part teammate, part coach, all leader and confident in their skill.

“If you’ve every played quarterback at any level, you’re a brother of mine,” Aikman recently said on ESPN’s “Year of the Quarterback.” “There’s something about that position that calls for all kinds of skills. If you’ve played it, you know. If not, you might not get it.”

Where else in football is there room for somebody with “touch.” How can somebody who is expected to stand in the pocket and take the most violent hit also be expected to console a teammate when he’s at his lowest? You might not think Joe Kapp and Peyton Manning have anything in common but as quarterbacks, they had to have many of the same skills.

I laugh every time I hear somebody suggest Tim Tebow should switch to H-back in the NFL. Tim’s a quarterback. He was that in high school and before. Out of position as a freshman, Tebow transferred to Nease as a quarterback, nothing else.

Hard to say if there’s a quarterback competition in Jacksonville or what the Jaguars timetable is for Blaine Gabbert to become the starter. But I can tell you this: When he walks into a room, there’s no question he’s a quarterback. You can tell when an athlete walks into the room, and Gabbert is certainly that. But he has a quarterback’s presence, an air of confidence.

I asked him about it when the Jaguars first drafted him in April. “I really like playing football,” he said, “But I LOVE being a quarterback. Absolutely.”

That’s obvious.