Boys Will Be Boys

by Jeff Pearlman

  In the Cowboys’ case, that someone turned out to be a 5-foot-10-inch, 194-pound rookie from the University of Alabama whose claim to fame was a celebratory dance. In a game against Florida as a senior, Derrick Lassic crossed the goal line, placed his hand over his heart, and fell to the ground, feigning a heart attack. It was an ode to Redd Foxx’s character in Sanford and Son, and—like the old sitcom—it was a huge hit.

  As the Cowboys’ fourth-round pick, Lassic had few expectations thrust upon him. Yet as the preseason progressed and neither side budged in the Jones-Smith stare-down, Lassic emerged as the front-runner to start the September 6 Monday-night opener at Washington.

  Wrote Ed Werder in the August 20 edition of the Morning News:

  This is what Derrick Lassic is not:

  He is not the first running back to win the league rushing title and the Super Bowl championship in the same season. He is not the Cowboys’ running back with the chance to become the fourth in league history to win three successive NFL rushing crowns. He is not the player who set Cowboys records for yards and touchdowns in a season last year. He is not the player who is missing training camp for the second time in four seasons.

  Derrick Lassic is not Emmitt Smith.

  Much of Lassic’s preseason was spent as Johnson’s bull’s-eye, and he came to strongly resent the coach. “I never liked how he treated players,” says Lassic. “The way he played favorites was horrible. Maybe I’m saying that because I wasn’t one of his favorites. Clearly I wasn’t.” Lassic ran for 34 yards on 10 carries in his exhibition debut against the Vikings on August 1, then gained 35 yards on 16 attempts versus the Lions in the London-based “American Bowl” a week later. He lost fourteen pounds midway through the preseason while suffering from prolonged dehydration, and cautiously tiptoed through the same type of holes he burst through as a member of the Crimson Tide.

  On August 10 Smith reenrolled at the University of Florida, and on September 4, two days before the opener, the Morning News reported that Howell called Jones to demand a trade to a franchise that would hand his client $4 million annually.

  “Totally out of the question,” Jones told the newspaper.

  As a boy growing up in Haverstraw, New York, Derrick Lassic never felt especially nervous before the start of sporting events. Really, why would he have? From the time he first played Pop Warner at age eight, Lassic was the fastest…the strongest…the best. He was a three-sport star at North Rockland High School who ran for school records of 1,787 yards and 31 touchdowns as a senior.

  At Alabama, Lassic was on the fast track to a noteworthy collegiate career when, on March 25, 1990, a young man with everything in front of him came face-to-face with mortality. He was watching the NCAA basketball tournament in his dorm room when the telephone rang. It was a nearby hospital, informing Lassic that his girlfriend, Cherlintha Miles, had been involved in a serious car accident while driving from Montgomery to Tuscaloosa for a visit. “I was thinking something happened to the car,” said Lassic, “and that she needed a ride home.”

  Tragically, the news was much worse. Miles, twenty, had died in a one-vehicle accident. For the next week Lassic refused to leave his room. He lost twenty pounds and his will to continue playing sports. Lassic packed his bags and prepared to head back to New York—only to be talked out of it by his father, Preston. “I had never lost anyone close to me,” said Lassic, “and I was ready to give up everything.”

  Instead, Lassic remained in Dixie, found his way out of the darkness, and, as a senior, ranked fifth in the SEC with 905 rushing yards. He officially anointed himself a Crimson Tide legend by running for 135 yards and 2 touchdowns in Alabama’s 1993 Sugar Bowl upset of Miami, thus clinching the school’s first national title in fourteen years. When the Cowboys selected him in the draft, it was an ode to talent and resiliency. “I was thrilled,” Lassic says. “I’d won a national championship and now the defending Super Bowl champs wanted me. Plus, I was well aware that I wasn’t ready to start in the NFL. They had Emmitt Smith for me to learn from. Perfect situation.”

  So here were the Cowboys, reigning titleholders, waiting to open their season in the dank, smelly, cramped visitors’ locker room of RFK Stadium, and here were two contrasting sounds. On a television blaring from a side office, a tape was playing of Smith’s Sunday interview with The NFL Today, in which he claimed he might be done playing football. “I got plenty of money saved away,” he said, “so I think I can live continually, live healthy, and continue to live happy.” Meanwhile, in a neighboring bathroom, the team’s new starting running back was violently upchucking into a toilet. The fierce, throaty echo bouncing off the porcelain filled the room and overtook Smith’s voice. Had it been Aikman or Irvin or—pretty please—Smith experiencing pregame nausea, Cowboy players would have laughed the moment away. Nobody was laughing now.

  Of all teams, the Redskins were not going to use a nationally televised Monday Night Football encounter to look sympathetically upon the Emmitt-less Cowboys. Not after Dallas took the ’92 NFC East crown. Not after Irvin had threatened to snap Darrell Green’s broken arm. Not after a rivalry that dated back thirty-three years. Certainly not after the Washington Times set up a Cowboys “hateline” the week of the game, inviting Redskin backers to offer their reasons for despising Dallas. A whopping 270 messages later, the point was clear. From “Johnson’s Liberace-styled hair” to “my ex-wife is a Cowboys fan” to “Emmitt Smith spit on me when I asked for an autograph,” apparently nobody in Washington could stand the arrogant Super Bowl champs.

  Before a hostile crowd of 56,345, the Cowboys were flattened, 35–16. Dallas fumbled the ball three times in the first half, dropped two interceptions, and botched an extra point. Redskins defenders took special delight in taunting the lippy Irvin, who no longer seemed so tough (or loquacious) without the threat of a handoff to Smith.

  The snap judgment was that Dallas without Smith was only a so-so operation. Yet the truth ran deeper. The real issue here was shattered team morale. As Smith stayed away, Jones spoke openly—and, it seemed, eagerly—about renegotiating Aikman’s contract, which still had two years remaining. Led by Haley, a number of the African-American Cowboys wondered aloud why a black man like Smith had to beg for the money he deserved while the white, sandy-haired quarterback could have riches thrown at his feet. As far as Haley was concerned, it was business as usual in the NFL, a league without an owner or general manager of color and only two black starting quarterbacks (Houston’s Warren Moon and Detroit’s Rodney Peete). “We were saying, ‘Wow, you’re not gonna take care of Emmitt!’” says Larry Brown. “This guy works hard, he’s at practice, he’s in the weight room. Our whole thing was that if Mr. Jones didn’t care about Emmitt, he wasn’t gonna care about any of us. The frustration among us wasn’t just the money—it was lack of respect for a guy who played all out, who worked his ass off, who never complained.”

  Though he was but an innocent bystander, Lassic paid dearly. In his first game as a pro, Lassic actually played well, gaining 75 yards on 16 carries against one of the league’s better defenses. He blocked adequately for Aikman, ran precise routes, and did as he was told. But the Cowboys’ offensive line—big, tough, tops in the NFL—blocked with neither the intensity nor the efficiency of past years. “I asked Erik Williams, ‘E, what the hell is going on here? Why aren’t y’all blocking for this kid?’” says James Washington. “He said, ‘Well, he runs too fast. We have a flow and he isn’t able to see it.’ It was totally unfair to Lassic.”

  The mounting friction especially irked Johnson, who was painfully aware the team’s punch bowl had been poisoned. With increased urgency Johnson urged Jones to reach an accord with Smith. So what if the NFL would be incorporating a $31 million salary cap beginning in 1994? “The problem was that I fell into the same trap I was trying to get players to avoid,” Johnson said later. “I was paying [too much] attention to Emmitt not being there and knowing that we weren’t going to be as good a football team without him. I lost
focus. We were working, but we weren’t focusing in on what we needed to be doing.”

  The bottom fell out in Week 2, when the Buffalo Bills came to Texas Stadium and recorded a 13–10 win before a visibly agitated crowd. Elliott missed two field goals and, two days later, lost his job. Lassic fumbled twice while gaining a mere 52 yards on 19 carries.

  Though Cowboy fans had come to embrace Jones in the post-Landry years, no one seemed to agree with his stance regarding Smith. In a stadium accustomed to adoring signs like I LOVE TROY and EMMITT FOR PRESIDENT, the fans were now expressing their furor.

  JERRY JONES: TRADE YOUR EGO, SIGN EMMITT

  JONES, DO THE RIGHT THING, NOT THE WHITE THING SIGN EMMITT

  WHAT IS THE DIFFERENCE IN ARKANSAS CLASS AND FIRST CLASS—EMMITT

  Immediately after the game Haley stormed into the locker room, tears streaming down his cheeks. He fumed aloud, “We’re never gonna win with this fucking rookie!” When Jones entered, Haley picked up his helmet by the face mask and whizzed it ten feet through the air, past the owner, and through a wall. THUD! “You need to sign that motherfucker now!” he screamed. The silence was deafening. “I thought that thing was gonna kill me,” says Jones. “Nobody was happy, and I understood why.”

  A bawling Haley proceeded to approach Jones, lean into his ear, and whisper, “Sign Emmitt! I don’t care how you do it. Cut me. Take the money out of my check. Just sign Emmitt!” It was a new type of crazy for Haley, who—in a career chock-full of nutty moments—had never before whipped a helmet at the man signing his paychecks.

  Lassic, meanwhile, sat quietly at his stall. It wasn’t his fault Smith remained unsigned—but it sure felt that way. “The fans showed no class,” he said of the merciless booing. “But it really bothers me when one of my teammates says something like that. That hurts bad. I only heard it from one person, but it makes me wonder what everybody else is thinking.”

  Prior to the opener against the Redskins, Tony Wise, the offensive line coach, had held a meeting to tell his minions that it was they, not Smith, who made the Dallas rushing attack work. “We’re gonna block our asses off and this kid is gonna have a huge day!” Wise yelped. “It’s about time you guys started getting the attention you deserve! It’s not Emmitt who makes this thing work. It’s you!” Immediately following Wise’s plea, the linemen studied a tape from a 1991 game, during which Smith spun, dipped, and charged to 100-plus yards. “Guys were like, ‘Yeah, Tony. Right,’” says John Gesek. “We knew how good Emmitt was.” By the time the Bills game had ended, nobody was fooling himself any longer.

  “Tony couldn’t pull that shit on us, because the truth was so damn obvious,” says Nate Newton. “Lassic was a nice kid, but if we expected to get back to the Super Bowl, we needed Emmitt in the lineup. It was as clear as motherfuckin’ day.”

  The day after the Bills debacle, the PLO and Israel signed a peace accord on the South Lawn of the White House. The news was the talk of the world—save for Dallas, Texas. When a local radio station asked listeners for their opinion about the breakthrough, the only thing callers wanted to discuss was Smith’s absence. Forget Yasir Arafat’s plan—what was Jerry Jones’s?

  On September 16, four days after the Cowboys dropped to 0–2, Howell and the Cowboys agreed to a four-year, $13.6 million deal that made Smith the NFL’s highest-paid running back. At a press conference that evening, Jones smiled, handed his star a check for $2 million, and flashed a rare dose of humility. “Some might wonder who the winners and losers are in this,” he said, standing alongside Smith. “When he signs his contract for four years, then the Cowboys are big winners. And when I sign this bonus check—it’s a big one—then he’s a winner.”

  Dallas’s Pro Bowl rusher smiled politely, but he had learned a lesson. “I spoke to Emmitt at that time and I told him, ‘Always remember this,’” says Dennis McKinnon, a former Cowboys receiver. “No matter how big you get, the color issue never changes. You’re always black first and foremost to those doing the paying.” For many Cowboys, the contract squabble resulted in the continued shift in Smith’s outlook and priorities. Where joy and passion once served as his motor oil, now there was a palpable need to look out for No. 1 first, everyone (and everything) else second.

  Smith returned to practice that Friday, and the debate began as to whether he’d be ready to play against the Phoenix Cardinals on Sunday night. In earlier times Smith would have been one of the first to practice, anxious to reestablish his status. But this was a different Emmitt—in the eyes of running backs coach Joe Brodsky, a disappointing Emmitt. Smith arrived late for practice, jogged at half speed, and seemed more interested in gloating over his financial windfall than in preparing for action. He was flabby in the stomach and soft in the legs. If Smith had lifted anything since the Super Bowl, it was a glazed donut. “I’m mad at him,” Brodsky said. “He needed to be in my office at seven this morning getting himself ready for the mental game. I don’t know what he was doing. I don’t know whether he was putting money in the bank or trying to take money out of the bank.”

  The Smith who spent the following days treating his return to the NFL as if it were a spa retreat was not a player Brodsky wanted to deal with. He scowled at Smith; barked at him and told him money had already changed his work ethic. The Cowboys flew to Phoenix and beat the Cardinals 17–10 for their first victory of the year, but Smith was a nonfactor. He carried the ball 8 times for 45 yards.

  Yet whether Brodsky wanted to admit it or not (he didn’t), Smith’s signing represented more than the addition of a lazy, overpaid slacker. With his return came hope. Although Dallas had lost a few free agents from the ’92 roster, the only striking difference from the world champion Cowboys and the 0–2 Cowboys was the running back from Florida.

  “We had some hosses on our offensive line—guys who could dominate the defense,” says center Frank Cornish. “But it takes a great back to set up good blocks and take an offense to a different stratosphere. We had our guy back in the fold, and we were dangerous again.

  “With Emmitt, we were in a different stratosphere.”

  Chapter 15

  GOOD TIME? LET’S MEET @ 12

  Remember North Dallas Forty? We made that look like fuckin’ kindergarten.

  —Nate Newton, Cowboys offensive lineman

  JOE FISHBACK LIKED sex.

  No, let’s amend that. Joe Fishback loved sex. Looooooved it. He loved it with black women, with white women, with short women, with tall women, with thin women, with fat women. He loved it once a day. Twice a day. Ten times a day. “I couldn’t go to sleep unless I had at least three sexual encounters,” says Fishback, a Cowboys defensive back. “Some guys might say, ‘I have to smoke.’ Some guys might say, ‘I’ve gotta drink.’ I had to find women. I was addicted.”

  Fishback is hardly exaggerating. He was, in the most clinical of determinations, a sexual addict—one of the estimated 9 million residing in the United States. “It got so bad for me that the night before home games we would go to the hotel and go over everything, and then we could go home for a couple of hours. I would go home and have someone waiting on me. I just needed it.”

  For the first two years of his career, split between the Atlanta Falcons and New York Jets, Fishback’s sexual addiction was, if not under wraps, restrained. Though the Falcons and Jets certainly had their groupies, they were relatively limited in scope and size. Then, on October 12, 1993, he was claimed off waivers by the Cowboys.

  Mr. Cocaine Addict, welcome to Colombia…

  On the road, the Cowboys’ team bus would arrive at a hotel, the players would file into the lobby and—WHOOSH!—females aplenty. Much like a junior high classroom, there would be a series of note passings. A piece of paper slipped to the leggy blonde—COME TO ROOM 222 @ 11:30. Another one handed to the brunette and her redheaded friend. GOOD TIME? LET’S MEET @ 12. Vixens who arrived too late for the grand entrance would wait until later in the night and pull the hotel fire alarm. “That way,” says Rob Geiger, a KRLD ra
dio reporter who traveled with the team, “they could stalk the players as they filed out.”

  Although many organizations discouraged salacious behavior, Jerry Jones chalked it up to boys being boys. It was the Dallas owner, in fact, who approved one of the more tasteless plans in recent sports history. When Jones purchased the Cowboys and agreed to have American Airlines continue to serve as the team’s transportation provider, the deal came with the caveat that a Dallas representative be allowed to select the airplane crews. According to an American employee, airline supervisors were told to approach beautiful flight attendants, make certain they were single, and solicit them to work Cowboy charters.

  Under the Jones reign, American maintained a book with the photographs and measurements of the most attractive flight attendants. Cowboy employees would then flip through the pages and select who they wanted to fly with the club—long legs and enormous breasts a priority. “We did a cross section, because you had redheads, brunettes, blondes,” says the American employee. “The understanding was that the flight attendants would get to go to the first half of the football games, then at intermission go back to the charter and get the planes ready.”

  This was the type of organization Fishback was joining—and now, with the team back on top, the adulation was greater than ever. “The Cowboys were hot, hot, hot,” Fishback says. “Everyone wanted a piece of us.” Within the first three weeks of Emmitt Smith’s return to the Cowboys, righteousness was back in Big D. Following the victory over Phoenix on September 19, the Cowboys ran off wins against Green Bay (featuring 5 field goals from the team’s new kicker, veteran Eddie Murray) and Indianapolis. Despite initial accusations of laziness, Smith quickly regained form, grinding out 71 yards versus the Packers and 104 more against the Colts. “With Emmitt back there,” says Jay Novacek, “the other team always had to be afraid.”