“I wanted to get right there as a friend as opposed to the boss who wrote the check.” ~Jerry Wayne explaining his more hands-on approach with players and coaches after Jimmy Johnson left

Episode 5 of the Netflix docuseries begins with the divorce of Jimmy and Jerry and the unbelievable hiring of Barry Switzer, who had been driven out of Norman after numerous scandals at OU and hadn’t coached at any level in five years. They rehash Jerry’s comment that any of 500 coaches could coach the Cowboys to the Super Bowl, the final straw that Jimmy couldn’t get over. They give us the classic footage of Michael Irvin angrily throwing trash cans at reporters in the Valley Ranch locker room and Troy Aikman telling us he might not have signed that second contract with the Cowboys if he had known Jimmy’s future was in doubt. Remember, Jerry introduced Barry as the next head coach the very next day after firing Jimmy!

And it took about that long for everything to fall apart.

Beginning with the very first practice of the very first day at that 1994 training camp in Austin, it was obvious to everyone that things had dramatically changed. Netflix shows us footage of Barry and the coaches and players checking into their rooms at St. Edward’s University and then a fleeting shot of the assembled press that day–more than 300 credentialed reporters crammed into a tiny cut out off a hallway for the first media conference of training camp.

This happens at the 15:34 mark of episode 5. When Carrie-Anne and I saw it, we roared. And then we laughed until we cried. Oh, my word! What a dork! We almost fell in the floor! We must have run it back and frozen the picture six or seven times, and we just couldn’t stop laughing. I was 27 years old and, by the looks of this, not nearly as cool as I thought I was. That t-shirt must be one of the sponsored gimmee shirts they handed out to the media two or three times a summer. And that Rangers hat! It was 1994, the first year the Rangers wore red. That hat’s only three months old; not everybody had them yet–that’s about as cutting-edge fashion as I’ve ever been. That’s the hat that caused then Governor Bush to call me out at a press scrum the following summer. And the glasses! Yeah, this was a couple of years before I began wearing contacts and a long time before I had Lasic surgery.

I was in my second job out of college, wearing about half a dozen hats as the news and sports director at KHLB Radio in Marble Falls, about 40 miles northwest of Austin. When the Cowboys were in camp for those four or five weeks each summer, I would wrap up the noon newscast and get to St. Ed’s as fast as I could for the afternoon practice, two or three times a week. I was there for two reasons: to conduct my own interviews and get my own soundbites for my sportscasts and talk show in Marble Falls, and to meet and network with Dallas reporters. My goal was to get to Dallas. And, eventually, it worked. I met Ted Sorrells on the sidelines at Cowboys camp and our friendship led to that first part-time gig with WBAP in 2000, which led directly to the Sports Director’s position at KRLD two years later.

Anyway, this episode is mostly about that ’94 season and the double whammy of losing Jimmy and getting Barry in his place. Troy remembers, like all of us do, that Jerry showed up at that very first summer practice wearing coaches shorts and a coach’s hat–he had everything but a whistle around his neck–and standing with the coaches during practices and drills. Jerry’s hollering at the players and clapping his hands and yelling instructions just like a coach. Jerry was much more visible and audible than Barry on those practice fields. He repeats in this episode that his experience as a player on the 1964 Razorbacks national championship team changed him and “I just wanted to recapture that.” Jerry wants to be one of the guys, he wants to be with the players and coaches and be right in the middle of everything that happens on the field and in the locker room. And we all noticed. And we all felt it–the dread in the pits of our stomachs. This is not a good development.

And it really did fall apart.

Netflix documents all of it for us. Erik Williams’ career-altering car crash on LBJ. Emmitt’s fender-bender on Central Expressway. The “White House.” The drugs. The arrests. The strippers and clubs. Breaking curfew. Canceling practice. Michael Irvin’s cocaine. It was out-of-control and it seemingly happened overnight. Troy tells the Netflix cameras, “We were not as focused on football; that was always the challenge after Jimmy left.”

Barry sounds incredulous as he tells the Netflix crew, “Are you saying it’s my fault? You’re not pinning all that on me!” And the next sound is a TV reporter announcing that Cowboys coach Barry Switzer has been arrested for having a loaded gun in his carry-on at the airport.

Early in this episode, Jerry recounts something his wife Gene told him the night he fired Jimmy. “You just can’t help it, can you? You can’t live with it going good. You just can’t do it. Here we are, we’ve won two Super Bowls, and you walk out there and make a change with the coach. You just can’t handle really good times.”

It’s a great episode, like all of them are. This one features that famous Barry Switzer appearance on Dale Hansen’s Sunday night “Cowboys Extra” in which the coach repeatedly punched the reporter   in the arm and led to Jerry firing Dale and Brad Sham from the Cowboys radio team. It spends a good deal of time on Jerry’s leading role in the NFL taking television rights from CBS and giving them to an upstart fourth network, which immediately made Jimmy Johnson a member of its pre-game set. And it introduces Deion Sanders to the drama as his 49ers upset Dallas in the NFC Championship Game and won the Super Bowl.

So… Barry Switzer is coach number 501?

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I see where Micah Parsons’ on-going back issues have been resolved and he has now been cleared to practice and play.

In Green Bay.

Peace,
Allan