Boys Will Be Boys (38 page)

Less than a year after winning the Super Bowl, Switzer had been all but officially reduced to a token. On multiple occasions he would arrive at team meetings still smelling of liquor from the previous night. “To see him in front of a squad in that condition just killed me,” says Tony Casillas, the defensive lineman who had played for Switzer at Oklahoma and rejoined the Cowboys in 1996 after two seasons with the Jets. “It was time for him to move on.”

Switzer relied on assistants to design the game plan, relied on Jones to judge, acquire, and maintain the players, relied on Rich Dalrymple, the media relations head, to keep the reporters informed. “I don’t think he cared to be the head coach anymore,” says Dale Hellestrae, the veteran lineman. “When it’s ten o’clock in the morning and it’s raining in Dallas and you’ve got to figure out where you’re going to practice and your head coach isn’t even in yet—that says something, doesn’t it?”

Through all the drama, the biggest bombshell of 1996 came with the release of a book,
Hell-Bent,
written by local scribe Skip Bayless. Billed as a biography that would spill the “crazy truth” of the ’95 Cowboys, the prime rib of Bayless’s text emerged out of a six-page span in which the author suggested Aikman was gay.

Wrote Bayless: “I had heard the rumor since 1991. An off-duty Dallas police officer who traveled with the Cowboys and worked secu
rity at their hotels first told me that ‘the word on the street’ was that Troy Aikman is gay. Over the next four years, I heard the rumor from two more police officers who worked around the team (and I know they mentioned it to team officials). One officer told me Aikman ‘was supposed to be’ having a relationship with a male member of a country-western band.”

While Bayless attempted to ward off critics by noting that
Hell-Bent
featured 284 pages
not
dealing with Aikman’s sexual orientation, he had broken two written-in-blood journalistic tenets:

• A.
  Don’t out people for the sake of book sales.
  
• B.
  If you decide to ignore Rule A, know what the hell you’re talking about.
  

Aikman had dated his first girlfriend for seven years, and arrived in Dallas in 1989 in the midst of another serious relationship. “I know for a fact that Troy was having sex with women who, quite frankly, he knew he would never call,” says Dale Hansen, the veteran announcer. “Skip thought it was suspicious that Troy had spoken of taking an AIDS test. Well, knowing some of the women Troy slept with, I’d have gotten an AIDS test too.”

In short, if he was gay, Aikman was putting on one hell of an act.

Such details mattered not to the attention-obsessed Bayless.
Hell-Bent
was neither righteous nor journalistic, and neither was its author. “While he was working on the book Skip would call me all excited and tell me that he got information about Troy being in the back of a car in a gay area of Melrose,” says Dean Blevins, the veteran Dallas radio host. “My reaction was, ‘Why are you telling me this? And why are you so happy about it?’” As a former muckraking columnist for Dallas’s
Morning News
and
Times Herald,
Bayless was one of the first scribes to hire an agent; one of the first scribes to be featured on billboards; one of the first scribes to negotiate for perks like a company car and stock options. It was often said the best way to torture Bayless was to remove the I key from his laptop. Frank Luksa, a local columnist
who refused to speak with Bayless, nicknamed him “Baby Jesus.” The tag stuck.

“Skip Bayless could have been one of the really great columnists,” says Dave Smith, the legendary
Morning News
sports editor. “But as a columnist, if you’re going to beat up on someone, it better be from your heart. You better feel that way. Skip attacked people just for the sake of doing it. His gay take on Aikman was the most unfair thing in my forty-five years in journalism.”

When Aikman learned of
Hell-Bent
’s contents, he confided in an attorney, asking what the fallout would be were he to sue and/or slug the writer. “If I’ve learned one thing covering sports, it’s that if you’re young, successful, and single, the gay thing will inevitably come up,” says Randy Galloway, the veteran columnist. “Skip should have been ashamed.”

Aikman found himself in a thankless jam. He could respond to Bayless’s book and give it credibility or ignore Bayless’s book and allow the rumors to fly. “It’s just like politics,” says Hennings. “The feces sticks to the walls.” As word spread across the country that he might be gay…could be gay…was probably gay…was definitely gay…had a boyfriend named Serge…was dating another Cowboy…loved
Terms of Endearment
and shopping for linens…the quarterback remained silent and fumed. Meanwhile, Bayless laughed all the way to the bank.

Hell-Bent
became one of the year’s best-selling sports books.

Dallas rebounded from the poor start, the unyielding distractions, and a subpar year from Aikman (who compiled 12 touchdown passes and 13 interceptions) to win five of its final seven regular-season games in 1996. But the team was falling apart on the field as much as off of it. With twenty seconds remaining in a contest with the Packers at Texas Stadium on November 18, and a Dallas victory already sealed, Switzer sent Chris Boniol onto the field to attempt his NFL-record-tying seventh field goal of the game. Mike Woicik, the Cowboys’ strength and
conditioning coach, thought it poor sportsmanship. “This is classless bullshit,” he told Switzer on the sideline. “Don’t do it.”

“Fuck you!” screamed Switzer. “You do your job, I do mine.”

“No, fuck you!” yelled Woicik. “You amateur piece of shit!”

Back and forth it went.

“Mike stayed on through the final games, but that was it for him,” says Kevin Smith. “The guy who was as responsible as anyone for our success was as good as gone.”

Thanks in large part to the splendid play of Irvin, who caught 64 passes for 962 yards in eleven games, the Cowboys earned a wild-card slot in the NFC playoffs. But on December 31, three days after Dallas thrashed the Vikings 40–15 to advance to a divisional playoff clash with the Carolina Panthers, yet another atomic bomb landed atop Valley Ranch.

According to the Dallas police, an unidentified twenty-three-year-old woman complained that, on the prior Sunday night, Irvin had held a gun to her head as Erik Williams and an unidentified man raped her. Well versed in the sordid tales of Irvin and the Cowboys, the media attacked. Dave Anderson, the normally mild-mannered
New York Times
columnist, even penned a piece titled THE COWBOYS SHOULD BAN IRVIN NOW. “If [Jerry] Jones needs a reason, Irvin has provided several,” Anderson wrote. “Stupidity. Arrogance. Or, simply, having embarrassed the Cowboys and the NFL again.”

That Irvin and Williams were later proven to be innocent was of no consequence. That the twenty-three-year-old woman, a former topless dancer named Nina “Rio” Shahravan, had concocted the entire tale was of no consequence. That the media had fumbled badly was of no consequence. The franchise was battered—in the executive offices, in the community, inside the locker room. The Cowboys traveled to Carolina, played nearly the entire game without Irvin (who was injured on Dallas’s second offensive play), and saw their Super Bowl aspirations blow up with a 26–17 defeat.

“Troy wouldn’t want to hear this, but he lost his security blanket when Mike got hurt in that game, and his whole demeanor in the
huddle changed,” says Ray Donaldson, the Cowboys center. “He was chewing out the receivers, cursing and yelling when they dropped a pass or made the wrong turn on a route, acting real nervous. And if your quarterback is like that, you’re dead.” In the visiting locker room after the game, an unambiguous tension lingered between jocks and journalists. When asked to explain the setback, Newton snapped at Mike Freeman of the
New York Times,
“You guys are the reason we lost this game.”

It was, to be kind, a simplistic viewpoint.

And that was that. The Dynasty of the 1990s was over.

Oh, there were flashes here and there. Following Switzer’s humiliating arrest for storing a loaded revolver in his carry-on bag at Dallas–Fort Worth International Airport in August, Dallas opened the 1997 season by winning three of its first four games, and talk was of a team refreshed and rejuvenated. But with talent diminished by age and free agency, Switzer’s club slumped badly, finishing with a 6–10 mark and missing the postseason for the first time since 1990.

“In previous years it wasn’t enough to just win,” says Taylor, the
Morning News
writer. “You had to win in a certain way. In the late nineties it started coming off as, ‘Well, we won. How many teams would love to be in our situation?’ Once you start thinking like that your downfall has begun, because the drive for perfection has stopped.”

Especially damaging was the impact of the Cowboys’ $35 million cornerback. Following the ’96 season, Sanders—who later confessed that, beneath the flash, he was terribly depressed—intentionally steered his car off a cliff in an attempted suicide. Upon surviving, he denounced his past and devoted his life to serving Jesus Christ. To his credit, Sanders woke up to the idea that flashy jewelry and fast cars do not guarantee happiness. To his discredit, he needed to express this new enlightenment to absolutely everyone. Sanders turned into a walk
ing JESUS SAVES billboard, urging all to see the light and attend the ever-increasing number of Bible study sessions held at Valley Ranch.

For the devoutly Christian Cowboys who were called to Jesus the way men like Irvin, Haley, and Newton were called to fishnet stockings, Sanders was the perfect teammate. For the rest of the players, though, he was an annoying distraction. Where was the Sanders who talked trash? Who took his greatest pride in shutting down receivers? In sports, it’s no secret that while zealously religious teams might be bound for the pearly gates, they rarely win. “When Deion found God, football study time turned into Bible study time, and a lot of us didn’t like that,” says Kevin Smith, the veteran cornerback. “Guys should be studying football on a Wednesday at twelve o’clock instead of going to a forty-five-minute Bible study. So what happens is Deion gets all the bottom feeders to follow his lead because he’s Deion Sanders. And before long the emphasis on football is woefully reduced.”

An especially contentious locker room issue centered on the team’s official chaplain. For fifteen years, the position had been held by John Weber, a former collegiate wrestler at Dakota Wesleyan University who approached Christianity in a soft, genteel manner. Sanders felt Weber’s mannerisms weren’t bombastic enough for a football team, and did his all to have the Cowboys replace him with Terry Hornbuckle, the high-octane founder of Arlington’s Victory Temple Bible Church. The ensuing debate among Cowboy players turned racial. The whites supported Weber, who was also white, while most African-Americans leaned toward Hornbuckle, an African-American. “So even though the Cowboys never admitted it, we brought in Hornbuckle because Deion demanded it,” says Kevin Smith. “He was there every Wednesday during Bible study, talking up God and all. Personally, I didn’t back that change. It didn’t seem fair and it led to a whole lot of negativity.”

Hornbuckle failed to last long with the Cowboys, which was probably a good thing. Nine years later he would be convicted by a Tar
rant County jury on rape charges involving three young women, including two members of his church.

If there was one thing Jerry Jones was certain of entering the 1998 season, it was that his franchise was about to rediscover its greatness. Sometimes, the Cowboy owner believed, dramatic change—no matter how risky or unpopular—could result in wondrous things. “It’s not always pleasant,” Jones says. “But leadership means making tough decisions.”

Hence, after two frustrating, mediocre seasons, Jones urged his head coach to resign. He still respected Switzer; hell, he loved Switzer like a brother. But even Jones, too often blinded by loyalty to his inept friend, could see the reality: Switzer was not capable of leading a Dallas renaissance. That January, a heavy-hearted Switzer stepped aside. “I knew what I had to do,” Switzer says. “I was sad, but I knew.”

As a replacement, Jones went outside of his personal circle, announcing on February 12, 1998, that he was hiring a well-respected Pittsburgh Steelers offensive coordinator named Chan Gailey.

Ironically, with Gailey’s arrival Jones had come full circle—the man who had famously fired Tom Landry had now hired Tom Landry
minus the hat
(and, apparently, the ability and know-how). Gailey was a no-nonsense disciplinarian; a devout Christian; a soft speaker who rarely wore his emotions on his sleeve. Yet the new leader of the Cowboys had no idea what he was walking into. Namely, a cornucopia of arrogance and laziness and indifference and zealotry. Namely, a nightmare.

If the Cowboys maintained any hope of recapturing what they had lost in discipline and preparedness after the Jimmy Johnson years, they needed a throwback—a take-no-crap drill sergeant who would pound men into the ground, then bring them back up with stirring, Lombardi-esque spewings. They needed a coach who would confront Sanders and say, more or less, “I love Jesus too—now get him the hell out of my locker room!” They needed a coach who would gather the
impressionable younger players into a room, point to a picture of Aikman or safety Darren Woodson, the team’s two hardest workers and most unselfish members, and say, “Follow them.” They needed a coach who knew Xs and Os, but who more important knew how to delegate to his assistants. They needed a coach who could stand up to Jerry Jones and say, “If you draft Kavika Pittman, I will bust you up.” They needed a coach who knew what it meant to be a Dallas Cowboy; who respected the history and believed in the future.

Really, they needed Jimmy Johnson. Or at least somebody like him.

Alas, the new coach was no Jimmy Johnson.

Gailey was only five months into his new job on that fateful afternoon of July 29, 1998, when Michael Irvin, heart of the Cowboys, took his barber’s scissors and thrust them into the neck of Everett McIver, the gargantuan offensive lineman. Gailey was horrified—by the act, of course. But surely also by the aftermath. As the eighteen-stitch gash on McIver’s neck gradually healed, Jones did everything in his power to make certain the incident disappeared. Really, to make certain Irvin—already on probation for cocaine possession—would not be shipped off to jail.