Boys Will Be Boys

by Jeff Pearlman

  In contrast to the early portion of his career, when Haley largely kept to himself, as soon as he joined the Cowboys he felt comfortable. On his first day at Valley Ranch, Haley arrived in the conference room for a defensive film session dressed only in a towel. “The next thing you know, Charles is lying naked on the floor in front of the screen, entertaining himself,” says Casillas. “Hand on his penis, back and forth.”

  When Butch Davis, the defensive line coach, saw what was transpiring, he stopped the tape. “Haley!” he yelled. “Get your fuckin’ clothes on and don’t come back in until you’re dressed.” The room erupted in laughter.

  On his second day at Valley Ranch, Haley wrapped an Ace bandage around his penis and strolled through the locker room naked, screaming, “I’m the last naked warrior! I’m the last naked warrior!”

  On his third day at Valley Ranch, Haley walked past a large hot tub in which offensive linemen Mark Stepnoski, Kevin Gogan, and John Gesek were sitting. “You know what the problem here is?” Haley yelled. “It’s another example of the white man keeping the black man down. Look at the three of you, relaxing as…”

  He went on. And on. And on.

  At this moment, in the infancy of the Haley Era, Gesek unlocked the key to surviving life with Charles. Instead of bowing to the barbs, instead of slinking into a mound of bubbles or turning the other cheek, the 6-foot-5, 275-pound Gesek looked Haley in the eyes and said, “Who the hell are you?

  “You and I are gonna have to fight,” Gesek continued. “I mean, what right do you have to talk to us that way? What do you know about us? About this team? How ’bout being here for more than a week before you open your mouth?”

  With that, Haley shuffled off.

  “Charles liked to push buttons and test the waters,” says Kenny Gant, a Dallas safety. “He would kiss you on the mouth and say, ‘Man, I love you.’ He’d just put a big ol’ kiss on your face, waiting to see your response. I’d be like, ‘Uh, Charles, didn’t you just tell me to go fuck myself two hours ago?’”

  Though Haley brought a dizzy insanity to Valley Ranch (he’s likely the only Cowboy in team history to refuse to wear a jockstrap during games), he was an undeniable winner who’d earned two Super Bowl championships in six seasons with San Francisco. “He knew the game better than any of us,” says Antonio Goss, a 49er linebacker. “He could pick up little patterns and cues that nobody else would see. Charles might have been odd, but he was intelligent and incisive.”

  From Johnson’s vantage point, Haley was the missing piece. When he wasn’t groping his penis or damning the white man or telling a writer to fuck himself with a blowtorch or calling Jones “Massa Jerry! Massa Jerry!” as he entered the locker room, Haley was staying late for extra film; providing instruction to rookies and young players; barking out words of encouragement.

  On one of the final days before the season opener against Washington on September 7, 1992, Johnson gathered his team and gave a tone-setting talk. “I want y’all to remember something very important,” he said. “What many of you have in common is the one thing that should drive you—nobody wanted you.” He looked around the room. There was Haley, dumped by the 49ers. There was Emmitt Smith, bypassed by sixteen teams in the ’90 NFL Draft. There was Nate Newton, the 340-pound offensive lineman routinely dismissed as too fat. There was Stepnoski, the undersized center. There was Irvin, who’d barely avoided being cut. There was cornerback Larry Brown, a twelfth-round pick. There was tight end Jay Novacek, left unprotected by the Cardinals. Sure, the Cowboys had a golden boy in Aikman to plaster on billboards and brochures. But by and large, it was a team of misfits. Of Charles Haleys.

  “There were so many pieces thrown into a stew,” says Washington. “But it wasn’t any ordinary stew. It was the Southern Country cooking stew, and it just tasted soooooooo good.”

  For the Cowboys, it had been a good offseason. No, a great offseason.

  First, the league confirmed that Dallas was America’s Team again, placing the franchise on an unheard-of five nationally televised games.

  Then, in early April, the Cowboys learned that Air Force’s Chad Hennings, the 1987 Outland Trophy winner, might be available. Dallas had initially used an eleventh-round pick on Hennings in 1988, figuring that, once his military commitment was fulfilled, the defensive tackle might give the NFL a shot. Though Hennings was an armed services loyalist, he started to think differently when President Bill Clinton announced massive cuts in the national military budget. Hennings wanted out.

  At 6-foot-6 and 272 pounds, Hennings was bursting with potential. But he was also rusty. Having spent much of the past half decade deployed in England, flying A-10 Thunderbolts in Western Europe (and in the Gulf War, in which he earned two medals for flying forty-five relief missions to support Kurdish refugees), Hennings had not touched a football in four years.

  On the night of April 25, 1992, he boarded a plane at London’s Heathrow Airport and landed in Dallas nine hours later for a tryout. His internal clock was eight hours ahead and he hadn’t slept in a day. “I thought I’d come in, run the 40 in front of my position coach, then talk,” he says. “It was nothing like that.” With Jones, Johnson, and ten to fifteen others in attendance, Hennings went through a bevy of tests and drills. He was equal parts nervous, exhausted, and exhilarated—and his performance dazzled the masses. Football depended largely on speed and size. Here was the merging of the two.

  “I like what I see,” Johnson said. “When can you get out of the Air Force?” Three weeks later Hennings was a Cowboy.

  Dallas used three of its first four picks in the NFL Draft to select players who, like Haley and Hennings, would put the final touches on Johnson’s dream of a blitzkrieg defense. With the seventeenth selection the Cowboys landed Texas A&M’s Kevin Smith, a badly needed shutdown cornerback with flypaper hands and Deion Sanders reaction time. With the twenty-fourth pick they grabbed Robert Jones, an East Carolina middle linebacker considered to be the draft’s best pure athlete. And with the ninth pick of the second round, they selected a linebacker-turned-safety out of Arizona State named Darren Woodson.

  “During Darren’s senior year of college he’d line up for two games at defensive end, then the next week he’d be out in space on man coverage, then he’d be an inside linebacker,” says Jeff Smith, a Dallas scout. “He was a marvelous athlete—a physical freak of nature—whom a lot of teams probably didn’t know what to do with. But we believed he was worth a shot.”

  Smith and Jones would start immediately, and within three years Woodson—a product of the Phoenix projects who was raised by a single mother working two jobs—would emerge as the best safety in the NFL.

  The Cowboys were loaded.

  And Johnson was miserable.

  Not just miserable. Tyrannical. Not one veteran could recall a more vicious Jimmy Johnson than the one who stalked the sidelines in Austin during training camp. For Irvin, whose relations with the coach dated back to Miami, the behavior was predictable. Johnson was often his most laid-back and nurturing when he knew he had a team that wasn’t up to snuff. At Oklahoma State, for example, many recall Johnson the teacher and my-door-is-always-open communicator.

  But the 1992 Cowboys were built to win, and Johnson felt the pressure of meeting his own high expectations. His philosophy was simple: I beat the crap out of you, I humiliate you, I dehumanize you—and you turn into a cold, hard gridiron machine. “That was Jimmy in a nutshell,” says Maurice Crum, a free-agent linebacker who had played for Johnson at Miami. “When I was a freshman in college I’d had a root canal, and I was hurting pretty bad. I asked Jimmy if I could sit out a practice—I mean, I could barely talk. He said, ‘Well, do you wanna play for this team?’ I said, ‘Yes.’ So he says, ‘See you at practice.’”

  In the summer of ’92, Johnson screamed at every mishap, error, and (oddly) good play that rubbed him wrongly. During a team meeting he hollered “Harold Heath!” and demanded the rookie tight end from Jackson State report to the front of the room
. “He cut me right there,” says Heath. “In front of everybody. It was just wrong.”

  Johnson made it clear to his players that some (Aikman, Emmitt Smith, Irvin) would be treated with greater dignity than others—and if you didn’t like it, you could find another line of work. A glaring example of this fanaticism came during the second week of August, when Kevin Smith, the first-round pick, snuck out of his dorm room after curfew and didn’t return until 7 the following morning. Accompanying Smith was a rookie free-agent cornerback named Michael James. When Johnson learned of the misadventure, he called the two into his office. “I know I can’t cut you,” he said, pointing toward Smith. Then he turned to James. “But you,” he growled, “better play your ass off this weekend, because you might not be here Monday morning.” That Saturday James was the Cowboys’ best defensive back in a 34–23 loss to the Houston Oilers. He was active. He was aggressive. He was fast.

  He was cut two days later.

  “Jimmy liked to fuck with your head,” says Stepnoski. “He wanted the mental edge.”

  Ever since arriving in Dallas as a third-round pick out of Pittsburgh in 1989, Stepnoski had felt unloved by his coach. The feelings were on point—Johnson didn’t like Stepnoski’s long hair and casual demeanor and it’s-all-a-load-of-garbage approach to gridiron discipline. “I’m a nonconformist when it comes to football,” Stepnoski says. “I believe in hard work, but I don’t like being treated like a child. That’s what happens in a football setting—you’re treated like a five-year-old.” In their first three years together, Johnson and Stepnoski were like Arafat and Netanyahu. Stepnoski refused to move to Dallas for offseason conditioning; Johnson refused to pay him well-earned fitness bonuses. During the ’91 preseason, Stepnoski suffered a severe bruise in his right calf and had to miss several days of practice. Johnson responded by accusing Stepnoski in front of the entire team of faking the injury, then making him walk a 100-yard sprint—“just to fucking embarrass me,” the center says. For the entire year, the head coach and starting center failed to exchange a single pleasant word to one another.

  Stepnoski had hoped to return in 1992 with a fresh start, but when Jerry Jones refused to meet his contract demands he held out and missed the entire preseason. Johnson coolly greeted his center upon his eventual return and did not activate him for the first two games. Other veterans—notably James Washington, Tony Tolbert, Michael Irvin, and Jay Novacek—had also held out, but none faced such hostility. “He insisted on punishing me for the audacity of challenging his authority,” says Stepnoski. “It was typical bullshit.”

  Despite Stepnoski’s feelings, the Cowboys were primed for big things. Not only did the ’92 edition look to be significantly more talented than past editions, but there was also a camaraderie that had not existed before. In late June a whopping eighty-eight players attended the team’s optional quarterback school—a showing unprecedented in the history of the franchise. The cohesion carried over into training camp. In contrast to past years, dozens of players would remain at the practice facility long after workouts had ended to study films over pizza and Gatorade, then hit the Austin nightlife for beers, shots, long legs, big breasts, and lap dances galore at Sugar’s Uptown Cabaret or the Yellow Rose or another of the city’s better strip clubs. With the Cowboys often drawing 15,000 to 20,000 fans for workouts, they didn’t have to do much to receive special treatment. Sure, thirty-something veterans like Jim Jeffcoat and Bill Bates avoided the party scene. But for the young, cocky, on-the-verge Cowboys, Texas was theirs for the taking.

  Chapter 10

  RETURN TO GREATNESS

  Our toughest games were practices. After going through a week against Michael Irvin and Alvin Harper and Russell Maryland and Nate Newton, Sundays were easy.

  —Kevin Smith, Cowboys cornerback

  HERE ARE TWO things you should know about the 1992 Dallas Cowboys:

  A. Nearly everybody had a nickname.

  B. They weren’t especially flattering.

  Emmitt Smith was “Bushwick” because of his (apparent) physical resemblance to Bushwick Bill, the 3-foot, 8-inch Geto Boys rapper who had recently shot himself while drunk. (He lived.)

  Offensive lineman Kevin Gogan was “Red Bone,” a colloquial term for a light-skinned black woman. “He was a white dude who loved those sisters,” says cornerback Kenny Gant. “He had a cute little white girlfriend, but it didn’t matter to him.” Wide receiver Alvin Harper was “Freaky Harp” because of the freaky women he’d do freaky things with in freaky places at freaky times. Defensive lineman Tony Casillas was “Pretty Tony” because of his belly-button ring and girlish mannerisms. Safety James Washington was “Drive-By” because of his street upbringing and thuggish disposition. Offensive lineman Nate Newton was “The Kitchen” because of his 340-plus-pound girth and mounds upon mounds of Jell-O-firm fat. Wide receiver Tyrone Williams was “Big Bird” because of his gawky 6-foot, 4-inch frame.

  “We all were called something,” says Kevin “Pup” Smith. “If you were a Cowboy you had a nickname.”

  Some had two.

  Cornerback Larry Brown was initially dubbed “Bone Brown” because of his high cheekbones but, says one teammate, “it was actually meant to be a joke, because on the field Larry was soft like a pussy, not hard like a bone.” Soon enough Brown’s moniker was changed to “Phyllis Diller” because of the facial similarities between the African-American football player and the wrinkly, unfunny white comedienne.

  Rookie cornerback Clayton Holmes was first anointed “Chip Head” by veteran defensive back Ike Holt, who thought the dent in Holmes’s high-top fade (hey, it was the ’90s) looked like a chip. When that lost steam, Holmes was anointed “Half Man, Half Horse.”

  “Clayton walked with his ass sticking way out,” laughs Gant. “Sorta like a horse, sorta like a man.” He pauses. “Really more like a horse.”

  Of all the nicknames, the most original was bequeathed upon Ken Norton, Jr., the fifth-year linebacker out of UCLA. Best known as the son of the former world heavyweight champion, Norton was fast, strong, engaging—and possessor of a Jay Leno–esque chin. Just how elastic was Norton’s mandible? During one game he was preparing to rush the quarterback when Charles Haley screamed from the sideline, “Kenny, back the fuck up! Your chin is offsides!” The laughter could be heard from Texas Stadium’s highest seats. Teammates took one glance at Norton and came up with every imaginable insult (“Big Chin,” “Face Boner,” etc.) before tagging him “Mac Tonight” after the McDonald’s commercial featuring a long-chinned moon crooning “It’s Mac Tonight.”

  The Cowboys were funny. Personable. Engaging. Tight-knit. Though players had initially bonded in their antagonism toward Johnson’s devilish workouts, a brotherhood had evolved. Many still laugh at the time Mark Tuinei, the Pro Bowl offensive lineman, used tweezers to remove the slip of paper from a coach’s fortune cookie and inserted one reading, CONFUCIUS SAY YOU WILL BE BALD, FAT, AND UGLY. With a roster chock-full of wannabe models, there were unofficial fashion shows after every game. Players would stroll through the locker room in their purple and green and orange suits and elicit cheers or catcalls from the peanut gallery. “Yo, Barney,” someone would yell when Irvin dared break out the purple Armani, “go back to Happy Land!” In surviving the 1–15 debacle together, many of the Cowboys knew an unusual sort of kinship. Anything could be said. Absolutely anything. “Hey,” Washington would bellow to any teammate within earshot, “how’s your wife and my kids?”

  Now, with golden days on the horizon, the cohesion was immeasurable. Players would report to Valley Ranch and find their lockers outfitted with bottles of wine or backpacks or leather jackets or digital cameras—courtesy of “Mr. Jones.” Free cars for the season were available to any player in need. Gift certificates floated from the sky. Those who wanted to play golf after practice could walk into a supply closet and grab anything from spikes to visors to khaki shorts. “Dallas was all about class and treating players like royalty,” says Kenny Gant. “You w
ere a king.” As a result, in a sport ruled by pain and turmoil, Dallas players were downright giddy. “If you were black or white, offense or defense, a partyer or a family guy, you were one of us,” says Newton. “There was no division in that locker room. We were one.”

  Veteran Cowboys took special pleasure in torturing first-year players. The hazing began during training camp, when rookies were forced to take the veterans out for a $250-per-head dinner at Papadeaux’s Restaurant. (In anticipation of the feast, players would chant, “Run those hos to the Papadeaux’s!”) Holmes still gets chills when he thinks about the time he was sitting on a toilet in the locker room when—WHOOSH!—the Great Flood arrived. “A huge bucket of ice water comes raining down upon my head,” says Holmes. “Boy, was I pissed. But what could I do? I was a rookie.”

  That was nothing compared to the day Kevin Smith forgot to pick up the defensive players’ sandwiches for Wednesday morning practice. As soon as the workout ended, Newton, Jim Jeffcoat, and a handful of others bum-rushed the unsuspecting rookie, stripped off his entire uniform (save for his helmet and jockstrap), carried him to a practice field, and used rolls upon rolls of ankle tape to affix him to the goalpost. Newton turned to Holmes and his fellow plebes and barked, “If any of you remove even one piece of fucking tape from his fucking body, you’ll get yours!” For the next hour, Smith wiggled and tugged, yanked and pivoted, until he finally escaped. “It was cold as hell out there,” says Holmes. “Pup came back into the locker room and half the hair on his body was torn off by that tape.”

  To officially become a Cowboy, a player had to run at least once with Michael Irvin, who was equal parts big brother, party host, and torture administrator. Though he missed the preseason in a contract holdout, Irvin deemed it his duty to welcome new players into the fold, be they first-round draft picks or unknown rookie free agents. At bars, all drinks were on The Playmaker. At strip clubs, Irvin would unroll a wad of one-and five-dollar bills and dish them out like cookies on a Camp Kiwi field trip. To the Cowboys who longed to live on the wild side, Irvin was a model ringmaster. First, he paid for everything. Secondly, he stayed out late without condemnation from Johnson, who was familiar with the cravings of his star wideout.