"What week does Randy Moss come out of retirement? Is he on the field for somebody's final preseason snoozer, or does he take a few months off, splurge on a vacation, visit the fjords of Iceland, see the Northern Lights, thrill to the final season of "Entourage," take a cooking class (how about "Seven More Ways with Chicken," at the Institute of Culinary Education), finally get a henna tattoo and find his way to a contender in late October?

Instinct says this is a faux-tirement, that Moss stormed out of football the way toddlers storm out of pizza parlors when told they can't have any more quarters for the stuffed animal forklift game. Not long ago, Moss's agent, trying to goose interest from NFL teams, said that his client was "in freakish shape," "motivated" and had a "huge chip on his shoulder." So the assumption is that if Moss had gotten the love Moss wanted in the NFL's post-lockout signing rush, he'd be playing a 14th season of football.

Instead, he retired, and people openly laughed at the declaration, not in the eye-rolling way they do when Brett Favre says he's leaving the game, but in honest skepticism. Moss is 34, and though his last season was a three-team disaster, he is not long removed from a second act of brilliance with the New England Patriots. Given the unpredictability of football, the way bodies collide, the way rookies fail to live up to expectations, do you think that NFL clubs are really going to ignore a retired Randy Moss?

Of course you don't.

So Moss sits, which is fine, since nobody who's tied for the second-most touchdown passes in history is dying to slog through training camp. He will wait for the call or calls that will surely come, and maybe they won't be tempting enough to bring him back, but his name will be on everyone's lips every time a passing offense sputters and a wide receiver lets a ball trickle off his fingertips.

Randy could have gotten that. We need Randy. Go get Randy. "