Category: Cowboys (Page 2 of 53)

“Make it look like it works, whether it does or not, by mirrors or smoke or wire.” ~Jerry Wayne on advice his father gave him upon purchasing the Dallas Cowboys

Episode 3 of Netflix’s “America’s Team” takes us all the way through the 1992 NFC Championship Game in San Francisco, from the opening kickoff to the jubilant locker room when Jimmy Johnson uttered the immortal cry, “How ’bout them Cowboys!” And at pivotal points during the game, they use flashbacks to give us the story of Jerry Wayne’s childhood, upbringing, and football formation, from schmoozing the old ladies at his father’s grocery store into buying one more head of lettuce to the national championship he won as an undersized offensive lineman for the Arkansas Razorbacks. It’s very cleverly done. Back and forth, back and forth, from Jerry’s dad turning the family store into a carnival of cheap gimmicks and promotions to Charles Haley sacking Steve Young, to Jerry writing a college thesis on the economics of professional football, to Alvin Harper catching the title-clinching slant from Troy Aikman at Candlestick Park.

I anticipated that there would be at least one revelation in each episode, something I had never heard before and just didn’t know. That didn’t happen in this one. We all remember the 91-yard slant to Harper from their own six-yard-line with four minutes left that sealed the deal for the Cowboys. And I’ve read about how Michael Irvin changed the formation coming out of the huddle so he could get the ball instead of Harper. But to hear the story first-hand from Irvin and Troy Aikman, to see them diagram it and break it down, and to understand why Irvin did it and why he believed the ball would be thrown to him, is really beautiful storytelling. And hilarious.

Allow me to say just three quick things about this episode.

The Game: The 49ers were the team of the 80s and heavily favored, the Cowboys were upstarts and unproven, it was played in San Francisco, and the field conditions were deplorable–everything you would ever want in a championship game. And this episode shows you every bit of it, from every angle, and from the perspective of all the major players. It’s a beautiful glorification of what is probably the most important, non-Super Bowl, playoff win in Cowboys history. It’s excellent.

The Owner: Everything that’s been wrong with the Cowboys since Jimmy left is unarguably linked to Jerry, and it’s painfully clear the longer this docuseries continues. During the flashbacks, hearing Jerry talk about his childhood and his high school and college days, it’s obvious that he cares much more about the attention and fame and money he receives as being the owner of the Cowboys than he does the trophies that are earned by the players on the field. Jerry talks about his upbringing around his dad’s store, that the business model was to distract from any shortcomings with glitter and flash, so they could keep making money. “You got to make it bigger than life,” Jerry says. “You got to add a little sizzle to it. And you can do that with the Dallas Cowboys.”  That’s how Jerry was raised. As he put it, “That’s how my twig was bent growing up.” I’ve never heard that expression before.

I do know that this documentary is not a fluff piece on Jones. Netflix paid him $55-million for all the access and the full rights to tell his story, and they’re telling it the way they want. Jones does not come off looking good, at least not yet. The irony is that he probably thinks it’s all good. He probably thinks it’s making him look like a genius. It’s not. I read somewhere that this docuseries won’t change anybody’s mind about Jones. I’m thinking it will frustrate Cowboys fans even more than they already are. In lieu of winning a divisional playoff game or competing for a conference championship, Jerry looks to “Smoke and mirrors and wire.”

The Catchphrase: Contrary to popular belief, “How ’bout them Cowboys” did not originate with Jimmy Johnson. He was not the first one who said it. Growing up in Dallas at a time when the whole city ate, drank, and breathed the Cowboys and lived and died with every snap, pass, run, tackle, and kick, I know that everybody said it all the time. It’s just what you said when the Cowboys were playing well. You would raise an eyebrow and say, “How ’bout them Cowboys?” Making small talk with someone on the streets or running into a friend at the store or at church: “How ’bout them Cowboys?” After a win, any win, didn’t matter, nail-biter or blowout: “How ’bout them Cowboys?” Everybody was saying it all the time during the ’70s. We said it in my family for at least a dozen years.

Now, it fell off in the mid and late ’80s because the team was so bad. It was something that was only said when things were good. But we started saying it again in ’91: “How ’bout them Cowboys?” Then it really picked up in ’92: “How ’bout them Cowboys?”

“How ’bout them Cowboys?” “Yeah, they’re 13-3, home field advantage.”

“How ’bout them Cowboys?” “They look good, don’t they? I think they’ve got a chance.”

“How ’bout them Cowboys?” “That defense is awesome, man! And Michael Irvin is catching everything!”

It’s how people in Dallas started their conversations. It’s just how we all talked, it was part of the cultural vernacular.

So, when Jimmy stood on that chair in the visitors’ locker room after the Cowboys won that NFC title game to advance to their first Super Bowl in 13-years, he said what we’d all been saying all over Dallas forever. But instead of a low-key conversation-starting question, he turned it into a exuberant and defiant exclamation. He changed the punctuation. “How ’bout them Cowboys!!!”

The players let out a shout, Jimmy’s rare display of joy was over-the-top, the CBS cameras were there to record it, and the rest is history.

Jimmy Johnson did not make it up. He certainly owned it more than anyone ever had, to his everlasting credit. But he didn’t make it up.

Peace,
Allan

“You can’t play football successfully with Sunday School teachers.” ~Jerry Wayne justifying the 1992 trade to acquire troubled and troubling 49ers’ defensive end Charles Haley

The second episode of the Netflix docuseries on the ’90s Cowboys zeros in on Jimmy Johnson and how he assembled the team that went from 1-15 to Super Bowl champs in just four seasons, ultimately winning three of four Super Bowls from 1992-95. It was the re-birth of the America’s Team Cowboys, after they had suffered a franchise-long six years without a divisional playoff victory. The episode recounts the drafting of Troy Aikman in 1990 and shows us really cool photos and videos from his childhood, It details the genius of the Herschel Walker trade that netted the Cowboys a total of eight draft picks, including Minnesota’s number one picks for three years, that resulted in Emmitt Smith, Darren Woodson, Russell Maryland, Kevin Smith, Clayton Holmes, and others who anchored those championship teams. Of course, they got Herschel to sit down for the episode, but I have no idea what he said because his over-speaking in the third person is terribly distracting. Former Vikings GM Mike Lynn was not interviewed for the show.

We get extended footage of Emmitt’s outrageous polka-dotted overalls shorts set he chose to wear for his arrival in Dallas and his opening press conference at Valley Ranch. And Michael Irvin’s laughing about it 35-years later is hilarious. And while we’ve known for years that Emmitt told people before his rookie season that he wanted to become the NFL’s all-time leading rusher, it’s funnier hearing Irvin talk about it. The Cowboys were coming off that 1-15 season when Emmitt made his personal goal public. Irvin just laughs when he remembers telling Smith, “All-time leading rusher? How about we just try to win a game?”

There’s a lot to process in this second episode. I’ve narrowed what I want to say into three sections: The memories, the lesson, the revelation, and the foreboding development.

The Memories: I was at KHLB radio in Marble Falls during this era and the Cowboys were holding their summer training camps at St. Edward’s University in Austin, just 40 miles away. So two or three times a week I would finish the noon newscast and hustle down to Austin to make the afternoon practice. I saw those Jimmy Johnson practices up close; but I’ll never forget how I also heard them. The media parking lot was at least a hundred yards away from the practice fields, but as soon as I opened the door to my truck, I could hear Jimmy yelling and coaching. Loud. Intense. Hands-on. Involved in every aspect of what was happening on both sides of the ball and in every group’s drills. In the huddles, running back and forth between the offense and defense, giving high fives and forearm shivers. The Netflix show really captures Jimmy’s burning, always-on, over-the-top intensity. It’s the exact opposite of Barry Switzer’s demeanor a few years later when we would be watching a full-team practice and couldn’t find the head coach at all. Sometimes we reporters turned it into a game on the sidelines during a scrimmage: Where’s Barry? How long will it take us to find the coach? Inevitably, someone would locate him sitting in a golf cart in the shade, over by the stands, talking to a group of young women. The exact opposite of the Jimster.

That intensity was there with Michael Irvin, too. I’m telling you right now, every practice I ever attended in six years at St. Ed’s and one summer at Midwestern State in Wichita Falls, without exception, every single time, Irvin was the very first one on the field and the absolute last one to leave. Every single practice. Running sprints. Working on routes. Catching balls. If Troy went in, he’d catch balls with Jason Garrett or Babe Laufenberg. If all the QBs called it a day, Irvin would catch passes from assistant coaches. Michael had/has the same personality as Jimmy, the same fire, the same commitment, the same burning passion to do whatever it takes to win. That’s why Jimmy loved/trusted him so much.

As for Charles Haley, he is every bit the awful person described in episode two. Jerry and Jimmy both call him the missing piece to those Super Bowl teams but, man, what they had to endure. I remember getting to St. Ed’s early one afternoon and watching while an intern walked up and down the sidelines of both fields, setting orange cones in a perfect line five yards apart. Haley saw what he was doing and began walking behind him, about 30 yards back, kicking every single cone as far as he could. Just to watch the poor kid pick them up and start all over again. Haley did things like this almost every day–he’d flip a table of Gatorade or turn a sack of footballs upside down just to make the interns or the assistants clean it up. Jerry has made a habit of trading for and/or signing troubled and troubling football players with major off-the-field issues. Haley was the first.

The best part of this episode is the famous “asthma field” outburst in all of its hilarious glory. Jimmy asks why a certain rookie is down on the ground during sprints. The rookie says, “I have asthma.” And Jimmy lost it. “Asthma!?! Get over on that other field and have some asthma! You’re on the wrong field to have asthma! Get out of here!” It’s so classic. So Jimmy Johnson. I hadn’t remembered that Jimmy was asked about it by reporters after practice. But Netflix has it. “I don’t want ‘I have asthma,'” Jimmy says, “I want the job done.”

Man, I do remember those practices and the way Jimmy coached. There was no doubting back then that he was completely in charge and his number one priority was winning football games.

The Lesson: Jimmy Johnson did not go all-in with Troy Aikman immediately. It took a long time. It took too long. Troy got beat up and, eventually, injured during that brutal 1-15 rookie season in ’89. And Jimmy went with Steve Beuerlein for both of those first playoff games in ’91, even though Troy had recovered from his hyper-extended knee by week 16. Not to mention the drafting of Steve Walsh, Jimmy’s national championship winning quarterback from their days together in Miami.  Troy never felt like he was truly “the guy,” and it was very nearly a catastrophic mistake. Troy talked to his agent about requesting a trade out of Dallas near the end of that ’91 season, and tells the Netflix cameras,  “I think Jimmy misread, early on, how important winning was to me. How dedicated and motivated I was to win.”

Troy and Jimmy do not have the same personalities. The same fire, the same passion to win, the same dedication to do whatever it takes to succeed–but not the same personalities. Troy is not the loud, in-your-face, rah-rah type, like Jimmy. The coach misread that as something other than what it was. And it nearly cost them everything. Aikman had everything Jimmy and Michael Irvin had–maybe more. It just wasn’t loud.

The lesson is one for all of us. I catch myself quite often judging a fellow-minister’s effectiveness or value to our mission according to how closely his or her personality matches mine. Why isn’t he loud and energetic? Why is she not excited about this? I’m wanting everybody to be like me. Good grief, how arrogant and short-sighted. And stupid. If everybody were like me, we’d all kill each other in about five minutes! And we would miss out on a variety of gifts and skills and ideas that make our team overall so much better. Don’t judge what’s inside a person or what they can bring to your team based on how closely their personality matches yours. As it turns out, Troy Aikman’s fire to win burned even deeper than Jimmy’s. It just manifested itself differently.

The Revelation: Michael Irvin tells Netflix that when Jimmy arrived in 1989, he gave his coach a list of all the players who needed to be cut, all the players who had grown complacent and lazy playing out the string under Tom Landry, the players who would not help Jimmy accomplish what they both wanted to accomplish. I have never heard this anecdote before. Never. He wrote the names on a piece of paper and gave it to Johnson. Evidently, Jeff Rohr’s name was on that list, but Jim Jeffcoat’s wasn’t. I assume Randy White’s name was on that list. Wow.

The Foreboding Development: Troy tells a story about the final regular season game in 1992, a home game against Chicago that clinched the NFC East with a 13-3 record, and the second seed in the playoffs. In the locker room after the game, Troy says Jimmy was about to give the team a speech congratulating them on the season, celebrating the division title, and pushing forward into the postseason. The more the Cowboys won, the more wound up and tight Jimmy got, but Troy says Jimmy was just about to let go. He was just about to cut loose and give the team the moment they wanted, the moment they needed, the admiration of their coach and a few minutes to revel in their accomplishment together. But as soon as Jimmy started, the locker room door opened and Jerry walked in with his friend, the Saudi Arabian Prince Bandar, and his 20-member entourage. Right into the middle of the sacred space, interrupting Jimmy and his football team. Troy says Jimmy stopped his speech, got a couple of things out of his locker, and left.

Yikes.

Episode two ends with the Cowboys beating the hated Eagles in the Divisional round and heading to San Francisco for the NFC Championship Game against the top-seeded 49ers. The last scene is Jerry Rice looking into the camera and saying, “The Dallas Cowboys thought they were going to come into Candlestick Park and win that football game. But, it’s not going to happen.”

Delicious.

Peace,
Allan

Netflix has its own titles for each of the eight episodes of their “America’s Team” documentary that dropped yesterday. But, while I watch this series, I’m naming my daily thoughts and reflections for the weirdest thing that comes out of Jerry Wayne’s mouth in each episode.

“I intend to have an understanding of the cleat situation. I intend to have an understanding of the player situation. I intend to have an understanding of the socks and jocks.” ~Jerry, during the Saturday night massacre, explaining to the Dallas media his intent to be involved in every aspect of the operations of the Cowboys

Jim Tuttle and I promised each other that we would not binge this Cowboys documentary, that we would watch one episode at a time, one day at a time, so we could properly process it, digest it, and discuss it together. So, last night I watched the opening episode, which details how Jerry came into the money to buy the team, his manic gale-force arrival in Dallas, his ill-planned firing of the legendary Tom Landry, and his hiring of Jimmy Johnson.

This first episode was remarkably wonderful. If this is any indication of what’s coming in the next seven, we are in for something really special. They’ve interviewed everybody, they’ve uncovered tons of never-before-seen footage, and they’ve packaged it perfectly. It’s so well done. And it seems that nothing is off limits. It’s not going to be the fluff piece on Jerry Wayne that I feared it might be. See for yourself. I don’t want to waste space here telling you how great it is. Trust me: it’s pretty great.

Three things really stood out to me in episode one: a stark reminder about something we already knew, a brand new revelation that caused my jaw to drop, and genius depictions of Jerry’s fatal flaw.

The Reminder: One of the many reasons I hate the Cowboys now is that Jerry has so lowered the standard for the team and its fans. Netflix did a great job of reminding us how bad things were for the team in 1988.

The Cowboys were in the longest playoff drought in franchise history–they had gone six straight years without winning a divisional playoff game. It was unheard of for a franchise that had been to five Super Bowls and twelve NFC/NFL Championship games in its first 29 years. Six years without an appearance in a title game??!! Texas Stadium was half empty, advertisers were dropping out, and we were all calling for dramatic change. The great Tom Landry and Tex Schramm were being openly questioned by fans and the media. And by me. And, if you were around back then, probably you. The local headlines in the Times Herald and Morning News were asking if it was time for Landry to go. Fan polls at the time suggested it was. The Cowboys were no longer “America’s Team.” The game had passed them by. We needed new blood and new ideas and new ways of thinking. The whole thing needed to be blown up. Everybody was saying it in 1988. Why? Because it had been a franchise record six years since an appearance in a championship game!

Remember?

I do. I remember being enraged that Jerry fired Landry in public during that Saturday night press conference (more on that below), but I was not so upset that Landry had been fired. Landry needed to be let go. The team needed a drastic change.

Look at what Cowboys fans tolerate now. This upcoming 2025 season will be the 30th in a row since Dallas last won a divisional playoff game. Yet, the stadium is sold out every Sunday, Cowboys merchandise outsells all the others by a million miles, and the Cowboys are the most valuable sports franchise on the planet. There’s no standard, no expectations for the team to be anything more than mediocre. I hear some Cowboys fans say Tony Romo should be in the Ring of Honor. Wait. What? Danny White led the Cowboys to three straight NFC Championship Games and we hated him for it! The bar is so low now.

The Revelation: Michael Irvin said something that I have never heard before. He claimed that when he left the University of Miami early to enter the NFL draft, his coach, Jimmy Johnson, who had just led the Hurricanes to the national title, told him that if the Cowboys drafted him, he should go, because he had a friend who was thinking about buying the Cowboys and, if he does, “I’ll be joining you.”

Whoa! At this point in the documentary, my mouth fell open and I immediately hit ‘pause’ on the remote. I looked at Carrie-Anne on the other side of the couch. What??!! Jimmy told Michael Irvin about the potential sale and about possibly taking the Cowboys job in April of 1988? A full football season and more than ten months before it actually happened?!? Wow. Mind-blowing. If that’s true—again, I have never heard this in my life–that means Jerry was talking to Bum Bright for a long time before he claims he saw the newspaper headline while vacationing in Mexico announcing that Bright wanted to sell the team. It also means that Jimmy coached UofM that whole ’88 season with one eye on Dallas. If this is true, it does help explain how Jimmy was able to say ‘Yes’ and walk away from the ‘Canes and into the Cowboys so quickly.

The Fatal Flaw: Jerry is all about Jerry. Always has been. Always will be. And while his gargantuan ego has served him well financially–is there a better marketing and business genius working in any industry the past fifty years?–it does not win football championships. When you own a football team, especially a public trust like the Dallas Cowboys, winning championships should be the most important thing. But, with Jerry, it’s not. Being the center of attention is the main thing with Jerry.

In one of the earlier scenes in the episode, Jerry is talking about his decision to buy the team when his eyes light up. He realizes the potential of what might be. “This could be a soap opera 365 days a year. I’ll get the eyeballs and the platform and juice it up a little bit.”

That explains a lot, huh?

Jerry stirs things up just to stir things up, just to generate some curiosity, just to get more attention. It doesn’t matter if it’s bad for the team, it doesn’t matter if it distracts from the on-field goals of the players and coaches; he just wants to be the lead story on SportsCenter and the hot topic on the podcasts.

That’s the main reason he botched the firing of Tom Landry so horribly. It was Jerry’s idea to celebrate with Jimmy at Mia’s on Lemon Avenue the Friday night before the massacre. Jimmy advised against it; Jerry insisted. When a Morning News writer saw the two and phoned a photographer to come get a picture, Jerry called him over and offered to pose. Well, of course, the photo is on the front page the next morning: Jimmy Johnson is in Dallas, eating enchiladas with the new owner, so Landry is obviously out. That’s how Landry found out he was fired! Landry flies to Austin Saturday morning to play golf, just to get out of town, and Jerry is forced to fly down there and fire Landry at Lakeway Country Club! Instead of taking the time and doing it right and having a face to face conversation with Landry before it all went down, Jerry got out over his skis because it feels good to him to have his picture on the front page. It feels good to have all that attention.

That’s why Jimmy was gone after back to back Super Bowl titles. That’s why Jerry hires only coaches nobody else wants. That’s why he spends all the cap money on three big name stars, leaving none for the linemen and special teams. That’s why he built the only east-west oriented football stadium on the planet. That’s why he had to be tackled in the draft room so he wouldn’t call in Johnny Manziel. That’s why he drags out contract negotiations with his best players.

It’s the main reason the Cowboys are entering their 30th straight season without winning a divisional playoff game.

And the documentarians at Netflix are doing a terrific job of telling it.

Peace,
Allan

Almost two years to the day after Netflix announced they had paid the Dallas Cowboys $50-million to produce a multi-episode documentary on Jerry Jones and his historic “transformation” of the Cowboys, we’ve got a title, a release date, and a two-minute trailer. They’re calling it “America’s Team: The Gambler and His Cowboys.” It will run for ten episodes. And it premiers on August 19. Here’s the trailer, which features Jimmy’s “asthma field” rant, Michael Irvin’s cocaine arrest, President George W. Bush’s explanation for the hole in the roof at Texas Stadium, and Jerry saying he likes to do things “our way.”

Netflix has continually promoted this documentary as the story of how Jerry “transformed” the Cowboys and how Jerry “established” the Cowboys legacy.

First, Jerry didn’t establish anything. The Cowboys had already played in a dozen NFC Championship Games and five Super Bowls when Jones bought the team. They had already been dubbed “America’s Team” by the NFL and were the most popular football team on the planet. That wasn’t Jerry.

Secondly, Jerry did transform the Cowboys, but not in the way his Netflix special is going to suggest. Jerry has successfully transformed the Cowboys from perennial contenders and Super Bowl champs to irrelevant also-rans. In the franchise’s first 29-years under the leadership of Clint-Tex-Tom, the Cowboys went to twelve conference title games and five Super Bowls, winning two. In the past 29 years under the leadership of Jones-Jones-Jones, the Cowboys have not won a single divisional playoff game and have the NFC’s longest championship game appearance drought by a whopping 14 years!

Thank you, Jerry. Great job. You’re right, there should be a documentary. True crime.

The thing that eats me the most is the documentary’s title: “The Gambler and HIS Cowboys.” That title perfectly captures the core of what’s wrong with the Cowboys and the heart of my hatred for the whole scene. Jerry Wayne sees the Cowboys as his, not ours. He never understood that the Cowboys belonged to all of us, collectively. They represented us, stood for us, embodied us. He only sees the Cowboys as his, to do with whatever he likes, to exploit for his own personal gain, to use as an “in” to whatever monetary windfall or celebrity access or boy’s club membership he desires. He shamefully betrayed a public trust. And he brazenly and unapologetically continues that betrayal every day.

It galls me that the very thing that has led to the Cowboys’ demise is being used as the celebratory centerpiece of this puff-doc. Yes, Jerry gambled and, yes, he won and he keeps on winning at the thing he cares about the most: his money, his status, his celebrity, his power. And Cowboys fans keep losing the thing they desire the most: a divisional playoff win, relevance, on the field respect, a championship.

I’m going to watch this show for a number of reasons–I won’t miss an episode. But I’m most curious as to how they’re going to trumpet Jerry’s accomplishments, his innovations, his successes, his genius, while acknowledging at the same time his team’s 29-year divisional playoff win drought.

They probably won’t. They won’t even mention it. Right? We know this. This will be a ten-episode flashback to the glory days of Jimmy and the Triplets and they’ll act like it happened five years ago. That’s another thing that so perfectly captures what Jerry’s Cowboys are all about: pretending like this historic drought isn’t really a thing.

Peace,

Allan