Play by Play

by Verne Lundquist

  Don Meredith was gracious and defiant in his postgame remarks—defending his teammates and the effort they put in. He didn’t use the term “moral victory” but in his own unique fashion he conveyed that notion. In fact, Don’s responses after the game to his friend Frank Gifford, at least according to Gifford, gave ABC producers a sense that he would be a great guy to have in the booth. Eventually they hired him for Monday Night Football. I know that I still retain memories of Bob Lilly churning his legs and flailing and failing on that frozen surface. It wasn’t just the Cowboys who struggled with the footing, though. The eight sacks they had were a result of the Packers receivers not being able to get open and their linemen failing to hold their ground.

  The other indelible memory I have of that game is the deathly quiet on the charter back to Dallas. Along with that, Tex Schramm hosted a New Year’s Eve party at his home for the Cowboys’ staff later that evening. A more somber “celebratory” affair I have not attended. “Auld Lange Syne” never seemed so dour.

  In the end, the final note in my first year with the Cowboys organization was not a false one. I’d witnessed a part of what is now NFL history. Two legendary teams, two legendary coaches. Whenever I hear people talking about how they would like to have some moments in their life frozen in time, I smile wryly, appreciating the sentiment but also thinking, Be careful what you wish for.

  Fortunately for me, eventually one of my wishes was granted and it turned out spectacularly well. Before I was hired to become the play-by-play voice of the Cowboys radio network in 1972, I played a couple other roles. I was the pre- and postgame host on KLIF and did the color analyst job for the 1970 and 1971 season. All the while I was still doing my TV sportscasting assignments as well. To show you how much things have changed in the NFL, during that 1970 season, when KLIF was the radio home of the Cowboys, they declined to do the radio for Super Bowl V. NFL rules prohibited them from using the full Cowboy network. They’d only be able to do the local broadcast and pay $5,000. I was already in Miami doing remotes and sending them back to Dallas to be played on TV. On the Wednesday before the game (I don’t recall if we referred to that time leading up to the game as Super Bowl Week back then), Tex Schramm told me to expect a call from management at Dallas station KRLD. I was asked if I wanted to be the radio analyst for the broadcast. I was a bit confused, since KLIF had passed on doing the game. Eventually I learned that management at KLIF didn’t want to pay the five-thousand-dollar rights fee. Can you imagine that today? Turning down the chance to get that many listeners at a relatively low price?

  Anyway, just to show how improvisational my first coverage of the Super Bowl was, along with being hired three days before the game, my perch for that game was a platform quick-built on the roof of the Orange Bowl. KRLD got the rights so late that all the designated press spots had been filled. I didn’t think much about it then, but now it all seems quaint and humbling—in a good way. Despite the Cowboys losing 16–13 to the Baltimore Colts, one of the real blessings of the weekend was that I got to work with Frank Glieber, who did the play-by-play. Frank doesn’t get the credit he deserves as a truly wonderful and talented broadcaster. Maybe he’s not recalled along with other giants of the profession, but I treasured my relationship with Frank. Maybe if he’d not died tragically young in 1985 at the age of fifty-one he’d have gotten more recognition than he did.

  Frank was a product of Northwestern University and its fine school of communications. (Young people with an interest in broadcasting often ask me how they can advance their dream to become a sports broadcaster. I tell them that I had no formal training but that Northwestern, Syracuse, and the University of Missouri have produced a number of excellent sports journalists.) He migrated to the Dallas area, left briefly for Cleveland to work the Browns games, then back to Dallas as the sports director at KRLD. I’ll spare you the details of Super Bowl V—well, not all of them. After so many years and so many games, they tend to blur a bit, but I do have a vivid memory of a helicopter flying over our aerie. Frank and I were up there along with our spotters. The wash from the rotor blades scattered my notes and I watched them drift down into the crowd.

  Similarly, I watched the tiny figures of the Cowboys and Colts drift around the field. This was the first postmerger Super Bowl, the two competing leagues having agreed to combine. In a way, I missed the notion of the Super Bowl being a kind of Appalachian blood feud. The underdog, upstart, rebellious AFL versus the favored, established, conservative NFL always provided a nice entry point into storytelling. I don’t know if I agree with the sentiment that had many people later refer to the game as “the Blunder Bowl.” It’s true the game was mistake filled. I don’t know if this says a whole lot about the quality of play, but linebacker Chuck Howley of the Cowboys is the only Super Bowl MVP who was a member of the losing team. He was notable for making two interceptions. Colts 16, Cowboys 13. Maybe we should have known the game was going to be underwhelming. The Colts were led by Earl Morrall. He’d taken over for Johnny Unitas who was in the later stages of his illustrious career, and, a bit like Peyton Manning leading the Broncos to victory in 2016, he wasn’t his best self that year. During the regular season, he threw more interceptions than touchdowns. His veteran leadership, his strengths as a field general, and the general sentiment that here was a guy who paid his dues and deserved one final hurrah made him a guy to root for. It was also an opportunity for him to redeem himself for the loss in historic Super Bowl III, when Joe Namath of the Jets famously predicted a victory in the face of long odds against them. Of course, with me being with the Cowboys, I wasn’t pitching stories of that type.

  For our part, the story line was that the Cowboys had to overcome a whole lot of trouble just to get to the final game, including injuries (running back Calvin Hill’s season ender in particular), a quarterback controversy with Roger Staubach and Craig Morton both starting at various points, Bob “the World’s Fastest Human” Hayes being benched for underwhelming play, and then wide receiver Lance Rentzel being arrested for indecent exposure deactivated late in the season. Though the nickname “Doomsday Defense” wasn’t a result of all that, it might as well have been applied to the whole squad.

  In particular, I never fully understood why Bob Hayes was in Landry’s dog house that season. He was an amazing downfield threat. Hayes’s story was compelling. A two-sport athlete (track and field and football) at Florida A&M, he had won Olympic Gold in Tokyo in 1964. He won the 100 meters in borrowed spikes and tied the world record while doing so. He won a second gold, anchoring the 4x100 relay. His come-from-behind effort in that race was thrilling, and his 8.8 time remains the fastest relay 100 ever run. Handheld and automated timing and rounding off times complicates this but the point is that Bob was really fast. Though he was considered to have “rough” football skills as a result of splitting his time between track and football, in his first two years in the NFL he led the league in receiving touchdowns. This was before the league’s rules and offensive philosophies changed but his 12 and 13 would have put him at the top of the 2017 NFL charts.

  For a variety of reasons Bob Hayes didn’t mesh with Tom Landry. In 1978, after Bob retired, he came up to the radio booth to say hello and watch a part of the game from there. At one point, I caught him staring, not at the field of play, but at the recently installed ring of honor, first unveiled in 1975. When Bob scanned it, Bob Lilly, Don Meredith, Don Perkins, and Chuck Howley were the only honorees. He leaned near me and said wistfully, “I’d give anything if my name was included.”

  Super Bowl V truly was a tragedy of errors. On the Colts’ second drive, Unitas threw a pass that linebacker Howley picked off. The Cowboys took over at the Colts’ 46-yard line, but a holding call on third down—at this point in the NFL it was a spot-of-foul type penalty—resulted in a 25-yard loss. Fortunately, the Colts’ Ron Gardin muffed the punt and the ’Boys recovered it on the six-yard line. They couldn’t punch it in from there, typical of the day, and settled for a field goal. That sequen
ce of blunders was typical of the afternoon.

  Even the 75-yard touchdown pass that Unitas threw in the second quarter was tainted. He delivered the ball high and behind his intended receiver, Eddie Hinton. Mel Renfro of the Cowboys got his hand on it and deflected to Colts tight end John Mackey, who took it in for the score. Of course, the Cowboys blocked the extra-point attempt, keeping the score 6–6. Taking advantage of a Lee Roy Jordan quarterback sack and fumble, the Cowboys led 13–6. Unitas would take another brutal hit later on, injure his ribs, and not return to the game.

  Two plays stick in my memory. In the fourth quarter, the Colts attempted a flea-flicker. Running back Sam Havrilak took the ball from Earl Morrall. He ran right and turned to lateral the ball back to his quarterback. Jethro Pugh got between them. With the play busted, Havrilak looked downfield and tried to hit Mackey with a pass. Instead, the Colts’ Hinton cut in front of him and took the pass. He sprinted toward the end zone, but the Cowboys’ Cornell Green caught him from behind and stripped the ball at about the 11-yard line. From there, the pigskin became animated and ran around like a greased version of its former self, evading capture by both sides. How it stayed in bounds as it was kicked, slapped, and otherwise went unrecovered remains a mystery to this day. Eventually it got pushed out of the end zone, resulting in a touchback. The Cowboys took over at their own 20.

  The other play was a heartbreaking officiating gaffe. Running back Duane Thomas was going in for a score from the one-yard line when the Colts’ Mike Curtis, a legendarily fierce defender, punched the ball loose. The scramble for that loose ball prefigured that fourth-quarter melee. I always try to wait for things to come to an official conclusion before declaring possession. When Dallas’s center, Dave Manders, emerged from the scrum holding the ball aloft, I called it as I saw it. Unfortunately, the officials saw it otherwise and line judge Jack Fette awarded the ball to the Colts. Ask any member of the 1970 Cowboys squad and they will tell you that that officiating error cost them the game.

  There was more football to be played, and it really came down to a pair of Craig Morton interceptions in the fourth quarter. One led to a Colts touchdown knotting the score at 13–13, and the other to a famous Jim O’Brien field goal as the clock wound down to nine seconds. One lasting image I have of the game is Bob Lilly tossing his helmet in anger and frustration at the very end. His headgear traveled a perfect forty-yard parabola, probably the best-looking pass on a less-than-stellar day of football. Of course, no one caught it and it bounced on the turf before settling upside down and empty. That was how the whole organization felt.

  The only consolation was the after-game party the team held at our hotel. Bedford Wynne was a minority owner of the club. He came through in a pinch when Clint Murchison realized at the last minute that he had not booked any kind of entertainment for the party. Wynne called in a favor. I showed up at the party at 11 P.M.—just as Willie Nelson began his first set. Before the affair shut down at five the next morning, Waylon Jennings and Jerry Jeff Walker had joined him.

  So many of the names and personalities from that game were a big part of my time with the Cowboys. I became the team’s play-by-play announcer in 1972 and stayed in that role until 1984. I was around these guys during one of the heyday periods in Cowboys history. Duane Thomas was a fascinating individual. A Dallas kid, he was an accomplished running back at Lincoln High, then went to start alongside the Miami Dolphins’ Mercury Morris at West Texas State. That school might not bring up many memories for fans of NCAA football, but Thomas was good enough at fullback to become the Cowboys’ number one draft pick in 1970. He was supremely gifted and performed well his rookie season. His career is probably most notable for what he didn’t do than what he did do: for periods of time, he didn’t speak.

  His personal life was complicated. He went through a divorce; he had financial troubles and difficulties with the IRS; he believed that his efforts on the field weren’t appreciated and he was underpaid. He also seemed to chafe under Tom Landry’s style. He sometimes ignored teammates when they offered a hand to slap in congratulation for a great play. His approach, shutting out some teammates, and his lapses into silence earned him the nickname “the Sphinx.” Rumors swirled around him and a few teammates—including Tony Dorsett, who eventually came on board in the backfield—have related odd interactions with him. I didn’t witness those, but I did see Duane do some things possibly to alienate himself. On our charter flights, nonplayers sat in the front. The players sat in the rear—almost without exception seated in a window and an aisle seat with the middle seat vacant. Duane would board, settle into a middle seat, pull a knit cap over his eyes, and remain silent the entire trip.

  In 1971, the Cowboys made it to the Super Bowl again. The game was against Miami, in New Orleans. Upset that the Cowboys had refused to renegotiate his contract, under financial pressure due to his life circumstances, Duane Thomas had gone silent for the entire season—not talking to the press and to the best of my knowledge not to any of the players. During pre–Super Bowl media day, he sat silently while the other Cowboys conducted interviews. (Before there was a Marshawn Lynch, there was Duane Thomas.) Thomas was under pressure to cooperate with the media. The Dallas PR guys got him to agree to speak after the game, but only if the Cowboys won.

  However, before game day, Frank Luksa, who fell into the ditch in Green Bay, saw Duane siting on the seawall outside the Galt Ocean Hotel in Fort Lauderdale. He decided to approach him. As Frank related it, they were both seated there looking out over the Atlantic. Duane was staring intently, the waves lapping at the rocks. Frank asked him what he was looking at or for. Duane replied, “New Zealand.”

  Ever the journalist and interested in factual accuracy, Frank told Duane that he wasn’t looking in the direction of New Zealand. He was looking east. A daring move given Duane’s sullenness. Duane offered his own bit of logic.

  “Maybe so, but it’s out there somewhere.”

  The two continued speaking for a bit. At one point Duane asked, “If the Super Bowl is the ultimate game, why is it going to be played again next year?”

  The man saw things his own way, and I’ve always loved that about him.

  Given Duane’s unique worldview, perhaps it wasn’t surprising that he and Tom Landry didn’t always see eye to eye; Duane even went so far as to call Tom a “Plastic Man” at a press conference in which he expressed displeasure with the Cowboys management. Tom had little room for idiosyncrasy on his team—right down to his own clothes. I’ve already mentioned Tom and his sartorial choices. Long past the time when most men were wearing hats, and when some coaches took to dressing less formally along the sidelines, Landry clung to his image. They represented the values that he professed. Landry was raised in faith, but it wasn’t until his career took off and he felt less than fully satisfied by his success that his commitment to religious faith went deeper. More important in shaping him as a man and a coach was his experience in the military. Landry’s brother Robert was killed in 1942 while piloting a U.S. Army Air Corps bomber. Tom enlisted after that, interrupting his engineering studies at UT, and eventually completed a combat tour of thirty missions.

  Engineer.

  Pilot.

  Coach.

  Defensive mastermind.

  Even without that background information and armchair profiling, what I observed was this: Tom Landry was clearly a man who liked to be in control, who was meticulous in his preparation and had a laser focus for details and preparation. Those attributes served him well for a long time. Inevitably, as is the case with any coach or leader, there were those who bought in to the program and those who didn’t. As much as Vince Lombardi could be jovial and inspirational and hard-nosed, Tom always struck me as a serious man. He was a great tactician, and the oft-repeated statement that Walt Garrison made likely says a lot more about his temperament than that. When asked if he’d ever seen Landry smile, Garrison said no, but he’d been there for only eight years. Don Meredith, when asked if Landry was a per
fectionist, laughed a bit and said that if his coach married actress Raquel Welch, a “sex kitten” as she and other females were then “known” and labeled, he said that Landry would expect her to cook.

  I can say this: Tom Landry did smile. In July 1969, during the preseason, the Cowboys rented a conference room at the Las Robles Country Club. Like most Americans, we were fixated on the upcoming moon landing. The press and other members of the organization gathered there after the workout. I was seated on a couch watching the coverage of the lunar module landing. Drinks and food were on offer as we waited for Neil Armstrong to take those historic first steps on the lunar surface. As I sat there, Landry walked in. He settled on the arm of the couch alongside me. When Armstrong stepped out and uttered those famous words, we broke into spontaneous applause. Tom joined us and I think that as a military man and a pilot he took special pride in the accomplishment. His grin was as wide as the brim of his fedora. Ironically, years later Tom and I also sat together during one of the country’s lower moments. President Richard Nixon came on the television in August 1974 to announce his resignation. There was no applause. No smiling. Just a deep sadness at a moral failing we’d only just begun to understand. Tom’s disappointment and disapproval were palpable.

  As far as I could tell, Tom was impervious to criticism. That was true in the quarterback controversy when he shuffled Roger Staubach and Craig Morton in and out of the starting lineup. At one point, against the Bears in 1971, he had them in and out of the game on alternating plays, for gosh sakes! He was a results-oriented coach in a results-oriented league. How he managed personalities is subject to much speculation and interpretation. That aspect of coaching and how coaches were evaluated was evolving, but Tom Landry was never afraid to go his own way.