Boys Will Be Boys

by Jeff Pearlman

  Abrams returned to the Cowboys the following year. He went through training camp and was active for the first eleven regular-season games, performing primarily on special teams. Upon being released yet again, he was signed by the Vikings. When Minnesota’s season ended Abrams found himself glued to the TV, rooting intensely for his old team. As Dallas won yet another Super Bowl, Abrams knew he’d take the ring. “I felt like I was a part of it,” he says. “Even though I wasn’t there at the end, it was a meaningful accomplishment.” When he called the Cowboys to request the hardware, however, he was greeted by hmms, haws, and—eventually—rejection. “They told me that since I signed with an NFC team that I wasn’t entitled to a ring or the money,” he says. “So even though I was a contributor to a championship, it meant nothing.”

  The decision came directly from Jones, and it was laughable.

  But that was the boss, a person Johnson no longer had affection or patience for. Johnson could only laugh when he heard that the Cowboy owner had allegedly instructed a private investigator to follow Jim Dent, the famed Dallas sportswriter, as he was researching a Jerry Jones biography. Was he that insecure? That pathetic? “Both Jerry and Jimmy had such tremendously huge egos,” says Larry Lacewell, the team’s director of college and pro scouting. “I think what it came down to was the stage just wasn’t big enough for both of them. They both lacked the intelligence to give the other guy the credit and respect he deserved. So instead of harmony, it became a mess.”

  The Jerry-Jimmy soap opera was best surmised in a New York Times editorial titled, appropriately, J.R. AND BOBBY, PART II:

  The problem seems to be who gets the credit for Restoring the Dynasty. The sportswriters gave it straightaway to Mr. Johnson, who took the team from 1–15 to two consecutive championships. Mr. Johnson nodded his perfectly combed head at the sportswriters and said, yes, I think you have got it about right.

  Mr. Jones, for his part, pointed out that he was the fellow who stacked up the $60 million or so needed to pay Troy Aikman and Emmitt Smith. Mr. Jones was said to feel that with that kind of talent on hand, he could probably coach the Cowboys himself. Mr. Johnson began to muse that it did not seem right to have an acknowledged Lombardi-style Football Genius like himself make only $1 million a year and maybe the Jacksonville Jaguars might like to play their first game in 1995 under the tutelage of a wizard of the sport.

  It is not yet clear which of these athletic-dorm siblings will rise up and symbolically slay the other. But the spectacle reminds us that there is one story older than Iron John. It involved Cain and Abel.

  The beginning of the end came on the night of March 21, 1994, when Jones, Johnson, and a contingent of current and former Cowboy coaches and executives converged upon Orlando for the annual NFL meetings. Sitting at a restaurant table within the confines of Walt Disney’s Pleasure Island, Johnson began recounting Jones war stories with two of his former assistants, Dave Wannstedt (who’d become head coach of the Chicago Bears) and Norv Turner (who’d recently been hired as head coach of the Washington Redskins), their wives, as well as Roz Dalrymple, wife of the team’s media relations director, and Rhonda Rookmaaker, Johnson’s girlfriend. Also present were Brenda Bushell, Johnson’s former TV coordinator, and Bob Ackles, the Cowboys’ former director of player personnel—both of whom had been fired by Jones—and Ackles’s wife, Kay. With the drinks flowing, Johnson described his boss as, among other things, a buffoon, a liar, a jerk, and an incompetent. He recounted the ’92 draft fiasco, when Jones insisted Johnson make him look good for the ESPN cameras. “We were all telling stories, having a good time, and we were ten feet away from a free bar, so everyone was feeling pretty good,” says Ackles. “That’s when Jerry and Larry Lacewell walked up.”

  Basking in the glow of another Super Bowl title, Jones was hovering ten feet above the ground, accepting the handshakes and congratulatory salutes of his league-wide peers. As the prime dealmaker in the NFL’s recently signed $4.4 billion television contract, Jones was now officially one of the big guns. Any owner who had initially been skeptical of this quirky outsider from Arkansas now had to acknowledge Jones’s moxie.

  Carrying large plastic cups of Scotch, Jones and Lacewell walked up a grassy hill and spotted Johnson and Co. “Here’s to the Dallas Cowboys,” cackled Jones as he raised a glass, “and here’s to the people who made it possible to win two Super Bowls!” With that, Ackles spun toward wife Kay and grinned. Ever since May 4, 1992, when he was fired by Jones, Ackles had retained a bitter taste in his mouth. The owner, after all, had once promised that he would be a Cowboy for life. Now, Jones finally seemed to be acknowledging his contributions. It was almost enough to…

  “Oh, B-b-b-b-ob, K-k-k-kay,” said Jones, interrupting his own toast. “I didn’t see y’all sitting there.”

  Dead silence.

  “It was just incredibly rude,” says Ackles. “Jimmy was looking at the man like he had an asshole in the middle of his forehead.”

  Jones acted as if nobody had heard him, and he repeated the toast. Not only did the participants refuse to raise their glasses, but Johnson shot Jones an unequivocal what-the-fuck-are-you-doing-here? glare. “It was embarrassing,” says Lacewell. “With the exception of Jimmy, these were people who either left the organization or were fired. They didn’t want to hear a toast from Jerry.” Jones slammed down his glass and snarled. “You goddamned people just go on with your goddamned party,” he said, storming off to a chorus of snickers. How dare no one respond to his words. How dare no one invite him to sit down. He was hurt, humiliated, and, most of all, tired. Tired of the hostility. Tired of the disrespect. Just plain tired of feeling like a guest of the Dallas Cowboys.

  An enraged Jones immediately returned to the nearby Hyatt Grand Cypress, plopped himself down atop a stool inside Trellises, the lobby bar, and railed against Johnson to friends. “I should have fired Jimmy and brought in Barry Switzer a long time ago,” he said. Sitting nearby were a handful of sportswriters. Jones greeted the journalists and left the bar with Lacewell. Within minutes most of the scribes departed too. The four who remained—Rick Gosselin and Ed Werder of the Dallas Morning News, Joe Fisaro of the Tampa Tribune, and Geoff Hobson of the Cincinnati Enquirer—sat drinking with Ackles, who had ambled up to the bar. “The place cleared out until it was just a few of us,” says Gosselin. “Then Jerry and Larry came back in and Bob said, ‘That’s my cue to leave.’”

  Without skipping a beat, Jones grabbed Werder by the left pants leg and said, “Why don’t you guys sit down a while. Let me buy you a drink. You sure as hell don’t want to go to bed and miss the biggest story of the year.”

  Werder looked at Gosselin. Gosselin looked at Werder. This absolutely, positively had to be their scoop. “Guys,” said Gosselin, “I’m heading off to bed.”

  “Me too,” said Werder.

  Fisaro and Hobson followed their colleagues to the elevator banks. The two non-Dallas writers retreated to their rooms. The two Dallas writers returned to the bar, where Jones and his loose lips awaited. Thus began the interview. “I think it’s time that I let you know I’m thinking of firing Jimmy,” Jones said. “I think it’s really time that I go ahead and do it before we run into more trouble. Now, I think, is the time to go ahead and get rid of his ass.”

  Gosselin and Werder were stunned. This wasn’t quite what they had anticipated.

  “You know, you may laugh at me for this one,” Jones said. “But I could step out and hire Barry Switzer as coach of the Dallas Cowboys tomorrow and he’d do a better job than Jimmy. Hell, I could probably get Lou Holtz over here. I might just step out tomorrow and hire either one of them. You know that Barry and I have been friends for thirty years. I think he’d do a great job in the NFL.

  “Let me point out one thing before you go to bed tonight,” Jones said. “I think there are five hundred people who could have coached this team to the Super Bowl. I really believe that. Shit, I could have coached the hell out of this team.

  “You know,”
he added, “I should have gone and fired that little sonofabitch a year ago. I can assure you this right now: I’m going to fire that sonofabitch and I’m going to hire Barry Switzer!”

  For the next hour, Gosselin, Werder, Lacewell, and Jones sat and continued to speak of all things Jimmy, Jerry, and the future of the Cowboys. “Lemme ask you boys a question,” Jones said to the table. “Can you win a Super Bowl without a franchise quarterback?” The answer, of course, was yes. “Can you win a Super Bowl without a franchise running back?” Yes, again. “Well,” he said, “can you win a Super Bowl without a fucking great coach?”

  Indeed, you could.

  “People have said that Jerry was drunk or Jerry was out of his mind or Jerry was just venting at the wrong moment,” says Gosselin. “None of that is true. He was almost talking himself into firing Jimmy. He knew exactly what he was saying and what he was doing.” The owner of the Dallas Cowboys wanted to win in the worst way—but he didn’t want to win this way.

  In a nod to proper journalism, Gosselin and Werder double-checked that everything Jones said was on the record. It was 5 A.M., after all, and Jones’s bloodshot eyes and half-empty glass of Scotch told the story of an owner lacking momentary judgment. “Print it,” Jones said. “Print fuckin’ all of it.” No, said Werder, let’s meet for breakfast and review the information. When the three men parted ways, Werder rushed to his room to start typing while Gosselin began his mad-dash reporting. Luckily for the scribes, earlier that morning Lacewell had filled Johnson in on Jones’s feelings, and now Johnson had caught wind of Jones’s rant. As Johnson wandered the hallways of the hotel, looking for Gosselin, he encountered Don Shula, the legendary Miami Dolphins coach. Johnson’s face was blank. “Jimmy, what’s wrong?” Shula asked.

  “It’s nothing,” Johnson said. “I think I’ve just been fired as the head coach of the Dallas Cowboys.”

  Moments later Johnson found Gosselin. “I am really dumbfounded,” he told the reporter. “For the simple reason that I don’t know what I did.

  “It concerns me when he says to a group of reporters that he’s not only going to fire me, but even says who the replacement is going to be. This wasn’t a statement to one person behind closed doors. This was a statement made in a bar with a lot of people around.”

  Come 9 A.M., the two reporters and Jones met in the lobby. A more subdued Jones reviewed his quotes and restated his initial declaration: Print it. “That’s one thing about Jerry—he’s always good to his word,” says Gosselin. “Say what you want about him, if he says something, he never backs off.”

  On the morning of Wednesday, March 24, readers of the Dallas Morning News walked to the end of their driveways, picked up their newspapers, pulled off the rubber band, and gasped. POST-SEASON SCRIMMAGE, screamed the front-page headline. The story read:

  ORLANDO, Fla.—Jimmy Johnson said he is reconsidering his future as coach of the Super Bowl champion Dallas Cowboys after learning that team owner Jerry Jones made repeated threats about firing him early Tuesday morning.

  Mr. Johnson confronted Mr. Jones with his concerns in a midday meeting.

  “I met with Jerry, and I’m still coach of the Cowboys,” he said later. “This particular incident makes me pull back and reassess things.”

  Mr. Johnson abruptly left the NFL’s annual spring meetings two days before their scheduled conclusion. He will miss his principal media commitment—a Wednesday morning coaches’ breakfast.

  “By the time the story came out, it was pretty clear to me that Jimmy’s tenure was over,” says Gosselin. “It wasn’t official, I suppose, but the relationship was torn apart. There was a lot of negativity behind everything, and it all exploded in Orlando. They were two men who could no longer coexist.”

  Later that day, Jones held a thirty-minute press conference at the hotel, refusing to apologize for his threat while chalking everything up to “just another day in the life of the Dallas Cowboys.”

  He went on, “[The bickering] is something that happens all the time. It never does affect any decision-making on my part, and I know it won’t affect any on Jimmy’s.”

  As Jones spoke, his coach was sitting in his convertible, driving back home to the south Florida coast, thinking about escaping a job he no longer wanted and an owner he could no longer tolerate. Jones had gone too far, and Johnson knew he would never again work for the Dallas Cowboys. “It was over,” he says. “I really knew it was over.”

  Four days later, on March 28, the owner of the Dallas Cowboys dipped into his notebook of phone numbers and dug out the ten-digit extension for a man living a remarkably humdrum life in the college town of Norman, Oklahoma. “Barry,” said Jones, “it’s Jerry. I have two questions for you. First, do you still want to coach? And second, how would you feel about coaching the Dallas Cowboys?”

  In the history of America’s Team, here was a truly historic moment. This was Clint Murchison hiring Tex Schramm and Tom Landry in 1960. This was selecting Roger Staubach in the tenth round of the 1964 draft. This was…

  “Jerry, do me a favor,” Switzer said. “Can you call back in a couple of hours? I just got home from the hospital and I’m still sorta groggy. They did one of those damn colonoscopies on me.”

  Chapter 19

  ANAL PROBE

  It’s been almost twenty years since Barry recruited me to Oklahoma, and if you ask him today who Reggie Barnes’s parents are, he’ll still say Wilmer and Ruth. Still.”

  —Reggie Barnes, Sooners and Cowboys linebacker

  IN LIFE, THERE are things that make perfect sense and things that make no sense at all.

  Ghostbusters made sense.

  Ghostbusters II did not.

  Kiss’s Destroyer made sense.

  Kiss’s Music from “The Elder” did not.

  Chocolate-covered raisins make sense.

  Chocolate-covered ants do not.

  Jimmy Johnson coaching the Dallas Cowboys made sense.

  Barry Switzer coaching the Dallas Cowboys did not.

  The whole thing had to be a joke, right? Jerry Jones would not hand over the reins of America’s Team to a man who had been away from the game for five years; who had left the University of Oklahoma in disgrace after a scandal-pocked career resulted in probation for the school because of his failure to “exercise supervisory control”; who didn’t even watch the NFL and, for the life of him, couldn’t tell you what division the Cowboys played in; whose area of expertise was the friggin’ wishbone offense; who had spent his most recent days operating an insurance agency.

  “There was sheer disbelief when Barry’s name came up,” says Jim Dent, the legendary Texas sportswriter. “Here was this man who had coached the hated Oklahoma Sooners, a team no self-respecting Texan could stand, and the rumor was he was coming to Dallas. I couldn’t fathom it.”

  Neither, for that matter, could Switzer. Back in 1989, when Jones was closing in on purchasing the Cowboys, he had considered Switzer a long-shot possibility to replace Tom Landry as head coach. At the time Jones wanted Johnson, and knew he’d likely have him—but the soon-to-be Cowboy owner loved Switzer’s bravado; his open-mindedness; his personal touch; and his understanding and appreciation of the African-American athlete. Mostly, he loved his 157–29–4 record in sixteen seasons with the Sooners, whom he coached from 1973 to 1988.

  “Barry Switzer is a winner,” Jones said. “That’s the bottom line. He wins.”

  Now five years later here was Switzer, fresh off of a colonoscopy, standing in his living room and wondering what the world was coming to. Coach the Dallas Cowboys? Me? Three hours after Jones’s initial phone call, Switzer dialed the Cowboys owner back. “I had one of those anal probes, but I’m a little more clearheaded now,” he told Jones. “Did you say you wanted me to coach the Cowboys?”

  Indeed.

  “This is not an interview,” Jones said. “You don’t have to prove yourself. I know who you are. I know what you stand for. I’m firing Jimmy tomorrow, so consider this an offer—if you
want it, you’ve got the job.”

  The day was March 28, 1994, and professional football was spinning on its head.

  In Norman, home to the University of Oklahoma, Switzer was treated as a merging of mayor and favorite son. He was making appearances on behalf of this car dealership and that bakery, shaking hands and kissing babies and eating like a king at his favorite local restaurant, Othello’s. He had even made a handful of trips to Italy with his three children—Greg, twenty-five, a concert pianist; Kathy, twenty-four, a senior at Oklahoma; and Doug, twenty-one, a quarterback at Missouri Southern. “I didn’t need the work,” he says. “I really didn’t.” And yet, in his soul Switzer was a football coach. A whistle around the neck, the crisp green grass of a practice field, helmets shining beneath a boastful sun: That was heaven.

  Switzer thought and thought and thought. “OK,” he finally said to Jones. “I guess I’ll do it.”

  “Football’s been my life, and it was an opportunity to do what I love,” says Switzer. “It was close enough to Oklahoma for my family to be a part of it, and I knew enough people with the Cowboys to think it’d be enjoyable.”

  A sporadic reader of the newspaper, Switzer was only mildly aware of the volcanic eruption that had taken place 1,278 miles away in Orlando. He knew that Jones and Johnson had had their issues, but he also knew they’d won the last two Super Bowls together. “Great coach, great owner, great organization,” says Switzer. “I couldn’t understand why those guys weren’t working out. But some problems are irresolvable.”

  In the aftermath of the debacle, nothing had been healed. Troy Aikman and Emmitt Smith spoke out against Jones, with the tailback threatening, “If you fire Jimmy, fire me,” and the quarterback going so far as to say, “If I could have anticipated something like this happening, I would have been hesitant about signing a long-term contract.” On the morning of Monday, March 28, the Dallas Morning News reported that Jones and Johnson would meet that day to maybe—just maybe—sort out their differences and pursue a third straight Super Bowl crown. Wrote Tim Cowlishaw: “Both sides believe anything is possible this week.” Little did Cowlishaw know that on that same morning Jones would call to offer Switzer a chance at coaching redemption.