Finally, Cowboys have a Super Bowl cast
by Steve Greenberg
Boy, 1996 seems like just yesterday, doesn't it?
The football world is, after all, a better place with Dallas at its center. If the love-'em-or-hate-'em Cowboys are anywhere near the center of your universe, it's more like forever ago. In the last weeks of 1996, Bill Clinton defeated Bob Dole, the Dow Jones gained 10 days in a row, the sports world mourned the passing of Pete Rozelle -- and the Cowboys danced all over the Vikings in an NFC wild-card playoff game.
Not exactly a high-water mark for one of the most iconic franchises in American sports. But, oh, the posterity. Nearly 12 years later, the Cowboys still are searching for their next playoff victory.
Twelve years constitutes merely an eternity -- for the love of God and country, 1996 was the year of The Macarena -- and, thus, is flagrantly unacceptable.
The good news: This is the year when the Cowboys pull up their bootstraps and git their giddyup on. For their own sakes, they'd better. Come January, this team will get its coach off the schneid, its ever-growing collection of superstars off the can't-do list and its itchy-fingered owner off the firing line. The Cowboys will win a playoff game, then another and maybe another. Or else.
As of today, they are the best team in the NFC. The franchise's ninth Super Bowl appearance beckons.
"On our football team, we have characters who have character."
So says playoff-winless coach Wade Phillips. Heck, maybe he's right. But he would have been more accurate to say his football team has more ratings-grabbing story lines than any hit on television.
There 's the conveniently dimpled leading man, quarterback Tony Romo, charming, perseverant and, well, dating a gorgeous blond Hollywood starlet. And the drama-queen wide receiver, Terrell Owens, given to fits of crying and other attention-hoarding antics.
There's the generally blissful, occasionally tense love triangle of billionaire oilman owner Jerry Jones, Phillips and offensive coordinator Jason Garrett.
There's a notorious pair -- Adam "Pacman" Jones and Terry "Tank" Johnson -- who are talking the talk, maybe even walking the walk, of the rehabilitated. (Can they really be trusted?)
There's even a classic amnesia case -- how else do you explain Dave Campo, roundly dismissed by Jerry Jones in 2002 after a disastrous three-year run as the Cowboys' head coach, flitting about in the background as the defensive backs coach? (Couldn't they have just hired an extra?)
Yes, the Cowboys are football's most popular and enduring soap opera; for millions of fans, they're anywhere from a guilty pleasure to a full-fledged obsession.
"What is really prideful to me is that we are recognized as a glamorous franchise," says Jerry Jones, "and recognized as quite possibly the most valuable franchise." (Forbes.com ranks the Cowboys No. 1 in value among pro sports teams worldwide at $1.5 billion.)
But don't be blinded by that star on the helmet. Behind its luminous shine, there is fun, yes, but also hard work and, most of all, extreme pressure. Says Jones: "I've always thought that we need to be striving to put a team in place that can be playing at a level that can be winning Super Bowls, not just a Super Bowl."
Will Romo be too distracted by his exploding fame, not to mention Jessica Simpson's body? Will Owens be able to handle not being the most talked-about player in town? Will Jerry Jones turn sour on Phillips (and sweeten on Garrett) if the Cowboys fail to exhibit marked improvement from a season ago, when they were 13-3 but still not tough enough to win in the playoffs? Will Pacman or Tank -- or both -- run afoul of the laws of acceptable behavior? Will Campo ... OK, you can forget about Campo.
Do these characters really have the character it takes to face these constant questions and turn the only perception that truly matters -- that the Cowboys, at long last, are back in the Super Bowl saddle -- into reality?
"You ever heard of that thing, perception vs. reality?"
This is Chester Pitts, veteran Texans offensive lineman, talking about Owens. According to Pitts, the Texans' Andre Johnson -- who could walk down most any street in the state and not draw a crowd -- is a better wide receiver than his colleague a couple hundred miles up I-45. And that's not all: "I believe everybody in the business knows it," Pitts says.
An overstatement, to be sure, but not without some merit. "To me, T.O. isn't even their No. 1 guy," says Vikings linebacker Chad Greenway, whose team lost, 24-14, in Dallas last season. "He's going to make some plays, and he's had some great games, but on an every-down basis I would have to scheme (running back) Marion Barber or (tight end) Jason Witten before him."
Pitts blames the media for "hyping T.O. as being better than he really is."
Needless to say, Owens eagerly contributes his share to any and all matters of hype. Regardless, he is an example of the perpetual rush among media, fans and even those in the game (how else do you explain a league-record 13 Cowboys making the Pro Bowl last season?) to judge America's Team and its members in superlative terms.
Jones is the most driven and egotistical owner in football. Phillips is the best coach never to win a playoff game. Outside linebacker DeMarcus Ware is the Cowboys' best player, according to Sporting News' preseason ranking of the top 101 players in football. (He's seventh.) Romo is the NFL's next great quarterback.
Indeed, we have been quick to hoist the undrafted Romo -- who has one full season as a starter under his belt -- onto a pedestal all his own, just below Tom Brady and Peyton Manning but above a modern-day Brett Favre, Ben Roethlisberger, Drew Brees, Carson Palmer or anyone else.
There are some mild dissenters. "I think it is a little premature to list him as a great quarterback," says Eagles cornerback Lito Sheppard, a two-time Pro Bowl selection. "He's definitely got the potential."
Former Cowboy Keyshawn Johnson caused a stir last year when he referred to Romo as being "overhyped," which many took as an insult. Says Johnson now: "When I said he was the most overhyped guy in the league, he was the most overhyped guy in the league. That's not the same as overrated."
Let's assume it isn't. And let's assume Greenway isn't exaggerating when he calls Witten a better tight end than Tony Gonzalez or Antonio Gates. Let's assume Pacman Jones and Tank Johnson will stay away from strip clubs and guns and remain dutifully devoted to helping the team win (and that it matters, even though neither player is at the top of the depth chart at his position and Jones has yet to be ruled eligible for the regular season by NFL commissioner Roger Goodell).
Let's assume Ware will make a widely anticipated run at defensive player of the year, seven-time Pro Bowl pick Zach Thomas will be just the leader the Cowboys needed at inside linebacker in his first season with Dallas, Barber will take his place among the league's leading running backs and Phillips will continue to be hunky-dory with coaching on his owner's clock.
Suppose all those good things are true. Any chance we're still overrating the Cowboys by picking them to reach the Super Bowl?
"Distractions? What distractions?"
Owens was toying with the media on the first day of training camp in Oxnard, Calif. Reeling them in. Naturally, it worked. And so he was asked about guest-starring on the Flavor Flav sitcom Under One Roof ("I'm trying to get into the acting world, the Hollywood world"), about Romo's ascension to Most Famous Cowboy ("I'm pretty sure he is, especially with his potentially better half"), about Pacman ("Great guy"), about the somewhat controversially player-friendly Phillips' running of another Camp Creampuff ("Everybody feels Coach Wade's approach is refreshing and bodes well for the team -- and I'm speaking for the whole team").
Ever the showman, Owens creates a moment whenever he speaks. But his approach to the usual subjects of intrigue -- many having little to do with football -- falls in line with the philosophy of the Cowboys organization.
"The Cowboys, because of our visibility, we've had more than our share of (attention on) personalities," Jerry Jones says. "My role, our role, is to encourage it, embellish it, expose it, when you have a chance to. And I think it's part of the entertainment value ... of what makes NFL football and the Cowboys interesting."
And so Pacman Jones can say without fear of rubbing anyone the wrong way: "I had a good 'vacation.' "
Phillips -- whose predecessor, Bill Parcells, brought tension to any discussion with the media -- can say without a hint of shame: "I'm a team player. I'm ridin' this train, but I'm just clangin' the bell." (Or, as he joked in the opening episode of HBO's Hard Knocks: Training Camp with the Dallas Cowboys, "This year, it's Camp Marshmallow.")
"That's why Wade is the perfect guy to coach Jerry Jones' football team," says longtime NFL analyst Joe Theismann, who agrees with the conventional wisdom that Phillips is toast if he doesn't at least win the NFC title this season. "Bill thought he was going to be a king, but he was a prince. Wade doesn't have to be the king. Jerry's the king."
Which sure as shinola means the king can say of his quarterback's appearance with Simpson on the cover of People magazine: "I like that. I think that's all very good. I believe in transcending our sport, not just staying between the lines."
"Unless it's magic happening in front of you, let's give him some space. Let's let him breathe a little bit."
Hard Knocks director Rob Gehring and his crew are stuffed into a trailer for a production meeting, and the man they are discussing is Romo -- who, it turns out, is not such a "character" after all. It's not that he has been unfriendly or unaccommodating to the HBO crew. But an Owens- or Jerry Jones-style showman, Romo is not. As he prepares for what he hopes will be a championship season, his life is very much between the lines.
"With Tony, he's still a humble Wisconsin guy at heart," Gehring says.
"Everybody makes such a big deal that he's in all these magazines and dating a pop star, but he's one of those guys who just loves football and wants to be around his teammates."
The truth is, they're all kind of like that. Even T.O. "He's at the point of his career where he knows he's going be an all-star. I don't think he's as worried about that as he is about winning," Phillips says.
It will always be the Super Bowl that matters most. Dallas raised banners at Texas Stadium following the 1995, 1993, 1992, 1977 and 1971 seasons. The year of that first one, Duane Thomas was a star running back and a season long "distraction," so surly and mean he went the entire season without speaking to management, coaches or even his teammates, let alone the media.
"The things people said about me, they weren't wrong," Thomas says 37 years later. "That was their perception. I might have been all of those things. But that was not all of me. I had other sides as well."
As Thomas knows as well as anyone, there comes a time to look at the hype -- the shine of the star -- and see right through it. The Cowboys are a football team, not a cast of characters in a formulaic soap opera. You want a sexy story line? With the additions of Zach Thomas, Pacman Jones, first-round cornerback Mike Jenkins and Campo (a terrific defensive backs coach, by the way), Dallas has improved the hell out of its defense.
Oooh. That'll really move the dial.
Back to 1971 for a moment. That was the year Texas Stadium opened, at a cost of $35 million. In 1996, it turned 25, and the Cowboys marked the occasion with what still stands as their last playoff victory. The stadium in Irving will come down at the end of this season -- giving way to a $1.1 billion model in Arlington -- but not before a new run of playoff success has begun. A banner 38th year in Irving is in the offing.
Or maybe we just hope so. The hype can be intoxicating. The football world feels better, after all, with the Dallas Cowboys at its center.
-- Contributing: Albert Breer
Boy, 1996 seems like just yesterday, doesn't it?
The football world is, after all, a better place with Dallas at its center. If the love-'em-or-hate-'em Cowboys are anywhere near the center of your universe, it's more like forever ago. In the last weeks of 1996, Bill Clinton defeated Bob Dole, the Dow Jones gained 10 days in a row, the sports world mourned the passing of Pete Rozelle -- and the Cowboys danced all over the Vikings in an NFC wild-card playoff game.
Not exactly a high-water mark for one of the most iconic franchises in American sports. But, oh, the posterity. Nearly 12 years later, the Cowboys still are searching for their next playoff victory.
Twelve years constitutes merely an eternity -- for the love of God and country, 1996 was the year of The Macarena -- and, thus, is flagrantly unacceptable.
The good news: This is the year when the Cowboys pull up their bootstraps and git their giddyup on. For their own sakes, they'd better. Come January, this team will get its coach off the schneid, its ever-growing collection of superstars off the can't-do list and its itchy-fingered owner off the firing line. The Cowboys will win a playoff game, then another and maybe another. Or else.
As of today, they are the best team in the NFC. The franchise's ninth Super Bowl appearance beckons.
"On our football team, we have characters who have character."
So says playoff-winless coach Wade Phillips. Heck, maybe he's right. But he would have been more accurate to say his football team has more ratings-grabbing story lines than any hit on television.
There 's the conveniently dimpled leading man, quarterback Tony Romo, charming, perseverant and, well, dating a gorgeous blond Hollywood starlet. And the drama-queen wide receiver, Terrell Owens, given to fits of crying and other attention-hoarding antics.
There's the generally blissful, occasionally tense love triangle of billionaire oilman owner Jerry Jones, Phillips and offensive coordinator Jason Garrett.
There's a notorious pair -- Adam "Pacman" Jones and Terry "Tank" Johnson -- who are talking the talk, maybe even walking the walk, of the rehabilitated. (Can they really be trusted?)
There's even a classic amnesia case -- how else do you explain Dave Campo, roundly dismissed by Jerry Jones in 2002 after a disastrous three-year run as the Cowboys' head coach, flitting about in the background as the defensive backs coach? (Couldn't they have just hired an extra?)
Yes, the Cowboys are football's most popular and enduring soap opera; for millions of fans, they're anywhere from a guilty pleasure to a full-fledged obsession.
"What is really prideful to me is that we are recognized as a glamorous franchise," says Jerry Jones, "and recognized as quite possibly the most valuable franchise." (Forbes.com ranks the Cowboys No. 1 in value among pro sports teams worldwide at $1.5 billion.)
But don't be blinded by that star on the helmet. Behind its luminous shine, there is fun, yes, but also hard work and, most of all, extreme pressure. Says Jones: "I've always thought that we need to be striving to put a team in place that can be playing at a level that can be winning Super Bowls, not just a Super Bowl."
Will Romo be too distracted by his exploding fame, not to mention Jessica Simpson's body? Will Owens be able to handle not being the most talked-about player in town? Will Jerry Jones turn sour on Phillips (and sweeten on Garrett) if the Cowboys fail to exhibit marked improvement from a season ago, when they were 13-3 but still not tough enough to win in the playoffs? Will Pacman or Tank -- or both -- run afoul of the laws of acceptable behavior? Will Campo ... OK, you can forget about Campo.
Do these characters really have the character it takes to face these constant questions and turn the only perception that truly matters -- that the Cowboys, at long last, are back in the Super Bowl saddle -- into reality?
"You ever heard of that thing, perception vs. reality?"
This is Chester Pitts, veteran Texans offensive lineman, talking about Owens. According to Pitts, the Texans' Andre Johnson -- who could walk down most any street in the state and not draw a crowd -- is a better wide receiver than his colleague a couple hundred miles up I-45. And that's not all: "I believe everybody in the business knows it," Pitts says.
An overstatement, to be sure, but not without some merit. "To me, T.O. isn't even their No. 1 guy," says Vikings linebacker Chad Greenway, whose team lost, 24-14, in Dallas last season. "He's going to make some plays, and he's had some great games, but on an every-down basis I would have to scheme (running back) Marion Barber or (tight end) Jason Witten before him."
Pitts blames the media for "hyping T.O. as being better than he really is."
Needless to say, Owens eagerly contributes his share to any and all matters of hype. Regardless, he is an example of the perpetual rush among media, fans and even those in the game (how else do you explain a league-record 13 Cowboys making the Pro Bowl last season?) to judge America's Team and its members in superlative terms.
Jones is the most driven and egotistical owner in football. Phillips is the best coach never to win a playoff game. Outside linebacker DeMarcus Ware is the Cowboys' best player, according to Sporting News' preseason ranking of the top 101 players in football. (He's seventh.) Romo is the NFL's next great quarterback.
Indeed, we have been quick to hoist the undrafted Romo -- who has one full season as a starter under his belt -- onto a pedestal all his own, just below Tom Brady and Peyton Manning but above a modern-day Brett Favre, Ben Roethlisberger, Drew Brees, Carson Palmer or anyone else.
There are some mild dissenters. "I think it is a little premature to list him as a great quarterback," says Eagles cornerback Lito Sheppard, a two-time Pro Bowl selection. "He's definitely got the potential."
Former Cowboy Keyshawn Johnson caused a stir last year when he referred to Romo as being "overhyped," which many took as an insult. Says Johnson now: "When I said he was the most overhyped guy in the league, he was the most overhyped guy in the league. That's not the same as overrated."
Let's assume it isn't. And let's assume Greenway isn't exaggerating when he calls Witten a better tight end than Tony Gonzalez or Antonio Gates. Let's assume Pacman Jones and Tank Johnson will stay away from strip clubs and guns and remain dutifully devoted to helping the team win (and that it matters, even though neither player is at the top of the depth chart at his position and Jones has yet to be ruled eligible for the regular season by NFL commissioner Roger Goodell).
Let's assume Ware will make a widely anticipated run at defensive player of the year, seven-time Pro Bowl pick Zach Thomas will be just the leader the Cowboys needed at inside linebacker in his first season with Dallas, Barber will take his place among the league's leading running backs and Phillips will continue to be hunky-dory with coaching on his owner's clock.
Suppose all those good things are true. Any chance we're still overrating the Cowboys by picking them to reach the Super Bowl?
"Distractions? What distractions?"
Owens was toying with the media on the first day of training camp in Oxnard, Calif. Reeling them in. Naturally, it worked. And so he was asked about guest-starring on the Flavor Flav sitcom Under One Roof ("I'm trying to get into the acting world, the Hollywood world"), about Romo's ascension to Most Famous Cowboy ("I'm pretty sure he is, especially with his potentially better half"), about Pacman ("Great guy"), about the somewhat controversially player-friendly Phillips' running of another Camp Creampuff ("Everybody feels Coach Wade's approach is refreshing and bodes well for the team -- and I'm speaking for the whole team").
Ever the showman, Owens creates a moment whenever he speaks. But his approach to the usual subjects of intrigue -- many having little to do with football -- falls in line with the philosophy of the Cowboys organization.
"The Cowboys, because of our visibility, we've had more than our share of (attention on) personalities," Jerry Jones says. "My role, our role, is to encourage it, embellish it, expose it, when you have a chance to. And I think it's part of the entertainment value ... of what makes NFL football and the Cowboys interesting."
And so Pacman Jones can say without fear of rubbing anyone the wrong way: "I had a good 'vacation.' "
Phillips -- whose predecessor, Bill Parcells, brought tension to any discussion with the media -- can say without a hint of shame: "I'm a team player. I'm ridin' this train, but I'm just clangin' the bell." (Or, as he joked in the opening episode of HBO's Hard Knocks: Training Camp with the Dallas Cowboys, "This year, it's Camp Marshmallow.")
"That's why Wade is the perfect guy to coach Jerry Jones' football team," says longtime NFL analyst Joe Theismann, who agrees with the conventional wisdom that Phillips is toast if he doesn't at least win the NFC title this season. "Bill thought he was going to be a king, but he was a prince. Wade doesn't have to be the king. Jerry's the king."
Which sure as shinola means the king can say of his quarterback's appearance with Simpson on the cover of People magazine: "I like that. I think that's all very good. I believe in transcending our sport, not just staying between the lines."
"Unless it's magic happening in front of you, let's give him some space. Let's let him breathe a little bit."
Hard Knocks director Rob Gehring and his crew are stuffed into a trailer for a production meeting, and the man they are discussing is Romo -- who, it turns out, is not such a "character" after all. It's not that he has been unfriendly or unaccommodating to the HBO crew. But an Owens- or Jerry Jones-style showman, Romo is not. As he prepares for what he hopes will be a championship season, his life is very much between the lines.
"With Tony, he's still a humble Wisconsin guy at heart," Gehring says.
"Everybody makes such a big deal that he's in all these magazines and dating a pop star, but he's one of those guys who just loves football and wants to be around his teammates."
The truth is, they're all kind of like that. Even T.O. "He's at the point of his career where he knows he's going be an all-star. I don't think he's as worried about that as he is about winning," Phillips says.
It will always be the Super Bowl that matters most. Dallas raised banners at Texas Stadium following the 1995, 1993, 1992, 1977 and 1971 seasons. The year of that first one, Duane Thomas was a star running back and a season long "distraction," so surly and mean he went the entire season without speaking to management, coaches or even his teammates, let alone the media.
"The things people said about me, they weren't wrong," Thomas says 37 years later. "That was their perception. I might have been all of those things. But that was not all of me. I had other sides as well."
As Thomas knows as well as anyone, there comes a time to look at the hype -- the shine of the star -- and see right through it. The Cowboys are a football team, not a cast of characters in a formulaic soap opera. You want a sexy story line? With the additions of Zach Thomas, Pacman Jones, first-round cornerback Mike Jenkins and Campo (a terrific defensive backs coach, by the way), Dallas has improved the hell out of its defense.
Oooh. That'll really move the dial.
Back to 1971 for a moment. That was the year Texas Stadium opened, at a cost of $35 million. In 1996, it turned 25, and the Cowboys marked the occasion with what still stands as their last playoff victory. The stadium in Irving will come down at the end of this season -- giving way to a $1.1 billion model in Arlington -- but not before a new run of playoff success has begun. A banner 38th year in Irving is in the offing.
Or maybe we just hope so. The hype can be intoxicating. The football world feels better, after all, with the Dallas Cowboys at its center.
-- Contributing: Albert Breer
posted by The Gryphon at 8:12 AM
<< Home