A headline on the firing simply read, "Sam Cooked." Brilliant.

But when the Orioles tossed Sam Perlozzo, the cooked part actually had nothing to do with the former manager but rather had to do with the total uncertainty surrounding his replacement.

Dave Trembley was named manager of the Baltimore Orioles. Interim manager. Already there's talk that former Florida Marlins skipper (and last year's NL Manager of the Year) Joe Girardi will be named the O's official manager by the end of the week, already talk that Trembley, the O's bullpen coach, is going to be at the helm only for the six-game road trip the team is about to endure against the Padres and the Diamondbacks. Talk that after that, he's cooked … like burned bacon.

"Thank you, Dave. Nice job. You kept the seat on the bench warm. Now back to the bullpen."

Which begs the question: Is "interim" the most disrespectful, meaningless word in sports?

It's a thankless, no-one-cares title with no longevity and less job security than Pacman's therapist. Going in, you know that you are not the team's choice, that you'll have "to do" until the powers that be find or sign the person they really want. Being an interim anything in sports is like a fiancée planning the wedding before she gets the engagement ring. You are only hired to be fired.

So, Trembley is done -- cooked before he even hits the skillet -- right? Not really. Because as bad a rep as the word "interim" has gotten the past 100 or so years in sports, there have been some who have had it and held on to the jobs, even some who went on to highly successful careers in their given sports once the word was dropped from their title.

It ain't what we think.

In basketball, Chuck Daly started off as interim in Cleveland. Also going that route: Pat Riley, Rudy Tomjanovich, Jeff Van Gundy and Scott Skiles. Gregg Popovich, although GM at the time, put an interim tag on his own situation when he initially became coach of the San Antonio Spurs in the 1996-97 season.

In the college ranks, we all know what happened to Steve Fisher with Michigan in 1989.

One of the most famous "interims" of this generation was Mike Davis. When he took over in 2000 after Bobby Knight was removed as Indiana coach, Davis held the interim title until he led the team to a 21-13 record that season. But even when he was fired six years later, it seemed as though the "interim" tag was still attached to his name. It seemed as if he could never shake it.

In football, the situation is a little different. Marv Levy took over the Bills in 1986 as an "interim" and went 2-5 the rest of that season and 121-73 (including playoffs) over the next 11 seasons with back-to-back-to-back-to-back Super Bowl appearances. "Air" Coryell and Jeff Fisher were once interims before enjoying big-time careers as coaches. But then there's the story of former Eagles coach Ed Khayat, who in 1971 took over an 0-3 team and went 6-4-1 the rest of the season, convincing management to remove the interim tag from his head coaching title, securing his job as their guy. The next season, he led the Eagles to a 2-11 record. And no coach -- not even Andy Reid -- has been safe in Philly since.

Another note for interims and football: No coach in NFL history who started as an interim has won the Super Bowl.

But baseball seems to be a different story from most other sports when it comes to interimship. Interims come and go. Often and oftener. You could be a one-game interim like Dick Howser was for the Yankees in 1978, and nobody remembers because Billy Martin had his own era in pinstripes at the time, or you can become a local legend like Joe "I'm the Manager of This Nine" Morgan, who in three weeks as interim manager (he obtained a two-year deal with Boston not long after he yelled those words to franchise superstar Jim Rice after pulling him from an eighth-inning bunt situation) of the Red Sox saved the franchise from irrelevancy in 1988 and last year was inducted into the team's Hall of Fame.

Or being an interim in baseball means you are Jerry Narron of the Reds. He came on as interim for the squad in 2005, when the team was 27-43. He finished the season playing .500 ball (46-46) and was signed through 2006, then in 2006, he was given a two-year extension through 2008 with a club option for 2009. Hella security for a once-interim.

Now what if Trembley does the same thing? What if -- as he takes over this 29-40 team that is in an eight-game slide, that has lost 13 of its last 15 -- he gets the O's to play .500 for the rest of the season? What if even before that, say, they go on a win streak while in San Diego and Arizona and win three, maybe four in a row, come back to Baltimore with a 5-1 record in the first six games under Trembley's guidance to face the Yankees? Then beat them in a homestand. Do the O's still give Girardi the job if he wants it? Do they hold the "interim" against Mr. Trembley?

And if Trembley magically overachieves, do the Orioles remove the interim tag from his skipperhood or do they continue the Ed McMahon search for a guy they feel is the "qualified" man for the job?

Whatever happens, nothing good will come to Trembley until that seven-letter word is gone. No one wants the scarlet letter "I" hanging over the future. Trembley should have just said no, kept the $42M payroll in the bullpen busy and waited for his phone to ring when Jim Tracy is asked to leave Pittsburgh or Buddy Bell is asked to leave K.C., and interviewed for a real job, something official. Because in sports, especially in baseball, there is nothing official about being an interim. Unless you look at it as being "officially on notice" that you won't be doing this very long and everything you did while holding down the spot more than likely will soon be unappreciated, even forgotten.

But still in sports, all sports, there's always someone there to take the job. Because you never know, you could be the next Popovich. Guess that's why coaches and managers do it in the first place. Often and oftener.

So maybe being an interim isn't so bad. Not as bad as we think. Maybe Trembley has a shot at still being a manager two weeks from now.

Hope he has Narron's number on speed dial.

Scoop Jackson is a columnist for Page 2 and a contributor to ESPN The Magazine. He's also the host of ESPN Original Entertainment's "NBA Live: Bring It Home". Sound off to Scoop here.