By Jon Laging, Sports Columnist

Championship teams don’t evolve spontaneously. They are the result of planning, work, and sometimes money. The efforts can be divided by: one: trades and free agency or two: building from within with wise draft choices and additionally by scouting reports to pick up lesser known, therefore cheaper players on the open market.

Most professional organizations use a combination of efforts. Money stills plays a large role in Major League Baseball, but the NFL and NBA have solved the money disparity among teams by initiating salary caps. Additional money may be spent, but owners are heavily penalized if they go over a certain amount.

Therefore, football and basketball teams success usually boils down to front office efficiency. Can they put enough good players on the field at one time? It’s not the best offensive players in the league, (as the Vikings found out), it’s the best team.

Occasionally, there arise practitioners devoted to trades and free agency. They are not interested in drafting players. George Allen of the Washington Redskins was such a believer. Allen would take his draft choices and trade them for established players. He was successful in his philosophy of “Now.” Don’t build for the future. The time is “Now.” In the seven years Allen coached the Redskins he had seven winning seasons, 5 playoff appearances and a trip to the Super Bowl. It worked for Allen, although he never won the Super Bowl.

Using the build from within system forced upon him by Carl Pohlad and baseball’s lack of an effective salary cap, we have our own Terry Ryan, general manager of the Minnesota Twins. He uses the draft system, scouting reports and waiver rights to build a team. Ryan is not a purist.

He will on occasion trade players as we saw with the A. J. Pierzynski trade for Joe Nathan, Francisco Liriano and Boof Bonser, (what a great name). Another trade got the Twins Carlos Silva, Augie Ajedo and Nick Punto for Eric Milton. Ryan is now having trouble getting other general managers to trade with him. It appears he knows more about their minor leaguers than they do. It looks from the sidelines that Ryan will not trade unless he feels assured of the outcome. He will not bet on what might be, but what is. He refuses to bet on a card that might fill an inside straight.

I thought that philosophy hurt the Twins last year. They were at the point where they needed to do something, anything, to provide a spark to the team. If that meant trading a minor league prospect for a major league hitter, do it. Ryan refused to take a chance and as you look back over last year’s season, maybe he was right. Perhaps nothing would have fixed the team. Now as we head into 2006 Ryan still has those prospects and will continue to promote from his minor league system.

Part of Ryan’s philosophy is dictated by Pohlad. When you are limited by lack of money, you cannot go out and buy a league MVP as the Yankees bought Alex Rodriguez. You have to build for the future with unknowns and cross your fingers. What an outstanding job Ryan did, building a division winner during the time of contraction. He put together three division champions while under money constraints.

George Allen was only interested in results for the season. Terry Ryan for the longer haul. A few years ago it looked like the Twins were set for sometime to come. It didn’t happen, but it was not Ryan’s fault. The team should have kept improving. They didn’t, primarily because the all-nations infield did not fulfill their potential.

Given the Twins lack of money, George Allen’s philosophy won’t work for the Twins. The big question is not Ryan’s system, but can he do it again?