Boys Will Be Boys

by Jeff Pearlman

  Wrote Dan Shaughnessy in the Boston Globe:

  The Cowboys are going to Super Bowl XXX, which means two long weeks of bad hair, big egos, big hair, bad egos, arrogance, corporate gluttony, cheap shots and cut blocks.

  Ugh. Dallas in the Super Bowl means Nike “swoosh” stickers on every cactus in Arizona. It means 77 Farrah Fawcett look-alikes prancing on the sideline. It means the insufferable Neon Deion as Grand Marshal…

  Really, how can anyone root for Dallas? If you back the Cowboys, you’ve got to be an insatiable front-runner, a cabbage or, worse, a Texan.

  On the morning of Super Bowl XXX, Larry Brown woke up, brushed his teeth, took a shower, ate some breakfast, and before leaving the hotel for Sun Devil Stadium, heard his wife ask, “Larry, are you nervous?”

  It was a fair question, in that Larry Brown was almost always nervous. Whether he was playing for Texas Christian or the Dallas Cowboys, rare were the pregame rituals that didn’t include heaping spoonfuls of anxiety. For some reason, this day was different.

  “Nah,” he said. “With Deion on the other side they’re going to be throwing at me all day. I plan on picking off two or three balls by the time it’s over.”

  Although Cheryl would later boast of her husband’s Nostradamus-like moment, it didn’t take a starting NFL defensive back to know that, in the battle of quarterbacks, Dallas possessed a tremendous advantage. While Pittsburgh’s secondary had to contend with the strong-armed Troy Aikman and his two favorite targets, Irvin and tight end Jay Novacek, Dallas’s defense would be facing Neil O’Donnell, one of the league’s most ordinary signal callers.

  A fifth-year veteran out of the University of Maryland, O’Donnell possessed above-average accuracy, slightly below-average arm strength, and an introverted personality that hardly inspired teammates. “Neil was very self-critical,” says Mike Tomczak, Pittsburgh’s backup quarterback. “He was a tough kid from New Jersey who strived for perfection.” O’Donnell’s stats were always more impressive than the actual, in-the-flesh player. Over twelve games during the ’95 season, he threw for 2,970 yards and 17 touchdowns, with a mere 7 interceptions. “Was Neil a good quarterback?” asks Andre Hastings, a Steeler wide receiver. “Well, he was pretty OK, I guess. But I would never say he was a Hall of Fame or Pro Bowl type of guy. He did his job.”

  “I look at it this way,” says Ernie Mills, another Steeler receiver. “We ran a lot of four-and five-receiver sets, so somebody was going to be open.”

  After the requisite two weeks of hype, Sunday evening finally arrived. The weather was mild—70 degrees, little breeze, a blue, cloudless sky. As America’s Team, the Cowboys were used to charging onto the field and hearing substantially more cheers than boos. Such was certainly the case in the previous two Super Bowls, when the Cowboys were the Rolling Stones playing Madison Square Garden and the Buffalo Bills were Bad Ronald at the Stormville Flea Market. This time was different. The Steelers represented every blue-collar American fatigued by the whole flash-and-dash Dallas mojo. It didn’t hurt that Pittsburgh had won four Super Bowls, a past that made them one of the league’s more popular franchises. “Usually when we came to Arizona, if there were 75,000 fans at the game, 50,000 or so were Cowboy fans,” says Dale Hellestrae, Dallas’s long snapper. “Well, this time we go running onto the field for pregame warm-ups and we’re getting booed. Cowboy fans were outnumbered by Steeler fans and those Terrible Towels were everywhere. I remember us looking around and going, ‘What the hell is going on here?’”

  Dallas took the opening kickoff and casually marched down the field behind a 20-yard pass from Aikman to Irvin followed by a 23-yard Emmitt Smith run. Though they settled for a 42-yard field goal from a shaken Chris Boniol (“I couldn’t make a kick from twenty-five to forty-five yards in pregame,” Boniol says. “I mean, not one”), the Cowboys had set a tone.

  After limiting Pittsburgh to three plays, Dallas dominated again, this time starting at its own 25-yard line and confidently attacking the vaunted Steeler defense. The key play—the sort of play that becomes a game’s signature—came on a first down and 10, when Aikman dropped back and launched a 47-yard spiral to Sanders, who dashed past cornerback Willie Williams to make an artistic, over-the-left-shoulder haul. Four plays later Aikman hit Novacek, and the tight end tiptoed into the end zone from three yards out. When Boniol kicked another field goal on the following series, the score was 13–0.

  Across the nation, 94.8 million TV viewers began to wonder whether Diana Ross’s halftime extravaganza would feature songs from her Supremes days or the solo years.

  “Those Cowboys sure didn’t lack for confidence,” says Kendall Gammon, the Steelers’ long snapper. “But neither did we. We were new to the Super Bowl, so maybe there were some nerves. But we were too good to lie down and get our butts kicked.”

  Following an exchange of punts, Pittsburgh attacked. Facing a third-and-20 from his own 36-yard line, O’Donnell rifled a 19-yard bullet to Hastings. “That was awful,” says Switzer. “[Linebacker] Darrin Smith was supposed to play zone and just stay in the middle. Instead he followed a receiver and [Hastings] was wide open. If the players just followed my damn instructions we would have won easily.”

  On fourth-and-1, Cowher’s directive was a simple one: Make a first down and steal momentum; come up empty again, and the night belongs to Dallas. Into the game came rookie receiver/running back/quarterback Kordell Stewart, who gained the needed acreage with a 3-yard dash. As Stewart popped to his feet, thousands of Terrible Towels twirled in the air, transforming Sun Devil Stadium into a swaying black-and-gold ocean. With thirteen seconds remaining in the first half, O’Donnell hit receiver Yancey Thigpen with a 6-yard touchdown strike. A potential blowout had turned into a legitimate battle. Halftime score: 13–7. “We were rejuvenated,” says Hastings. “The rest of the game was going to belong to us.”

  In the Steelers’ locker room, Cowher was at his fiery best. Known for shoving his ironworker’s jaw in a Steeler’s face and screaming or crying or laughing, he was all rage. “Those sons of bitches thought you were nothing!” he screamed. “They thought they were going to run all over you! They thought you were a joke. Well, they’re not laughing anymore! We took their best shots! Now it’s our turn! Let’s go take what’s ours…”

  As Cowher spoke, not a peep was uttered from his players. Pittsburgh had endured two weeks of ridicule, and it stung. The players stormed back onto the field with a fire Dallas lacked. This was about disrespect; about payback; about overcoming the odds and doubters. “You hear enough trash, you snap,” says Hastings. “We snapped.”

  After unsuccessful drives by both teams to start the third quarter, Pittsburgh began to grind its way down the field, rolling over a sagging Cowboy defense to its own 48-yard line. Facing third down and 9, O’Donnell received the snap, took five steps backward, and was pressured by Chad Hennings, who charged through the middle of the Pittsburgh line. On the verge of being sacked, O’Donnell tossed the ball to the outside, where he expected to find an uncovered Mills. Instead, it floated into the arms of Brown, who returned it 44 yards to the Steelers’ 18. On the Dallas sideline, players leapt with excitement. “I can’t lie,” says Brown. “That one was a gift.” With 6:42 left in the third quarter, Emmitt Smith ran in from a yard away, handing Dallas a 20–7 advantage.

  “That was Neil’s fault,” says Mills. “He played great for us that season, but on the one play he made a really bad read.”

  The Steelers and Cowboys traded aborted drives, and when Pittsburgh got the ball again, it used nine plays to advance from its own 20-yard line to the Cowboys’ 19. But on third-and-8, O’Donnell was hammered by Dallas defensive end Tony Tolbert, who slammed the quarterback down for a devastating 9-yard loss. A 46-yard field goal by Norm Johnson cut the Dallas lead to 20–10 with 11:20 left in the game.

  Then Cowher—a calculated gambler—took a major chance. With the Cowboys lined up for a run-of-the-mill kickoff, Norm Johnson squibbed the ball off the tee toward the right
sideline, where Pittsburgh defensive back Deon Figures scooped it up. First-and-10, Steelers, on their own 48-yard line. “At that moment I was thinking, ‘We’re gonna lose this thing; I can’t believe it,’” says Dallas linebacker Jim Schwantz. “Because I thought it was gonna be an easy game. I thought we’d throw our helmets out there and win.”

  Nine plays later, Pittsburgh running back Bam Morris rammed through on a 1-yard touchdown run, cutting the deficit to 20–17. “Once we got the jitters out,” said Steelers cornerback Carnell Lake, “we out-played them.”

  It was going to happen. It was really going to happen. The Pittsburgh Steelers were about to beat the Dallas Cowboys. Impossible. Unimaginable. With 4:15 left in the game, the Steelers got the ball back on their own 32-yard line, momentum on their side, the fans in a frenzy, one of the greatest upsets in Super Bowl history within reach.

  And their quarterback was nervous.

  Extremely nervous.

  O’Donnell’s eyes were wide and his breaths were deep. “I talked to some offensive guys later and they said Neil wasn’t looking so good in huddle,” says Jerry Olsavsky, a Steelers linebacker. “I didn’t understand that—we weren’t scared on defense. We were never scared on defense.”

  On first down and 10, O’Donnell scrambled left and threw toward Hastings, who dropped the ball.

  On second down and 10, two men sealed their eternal NFL statuses:

  One turned into Mookie Wilson.

  The other—Bill Buckner.

  O’Donnell and the Steelers bounded out of the huddle convinced they had a play certain to work. O’Donnell would take a four-step drop and fire a pass to Hastings, who planned on using his speed to run a slant route across the field and in front of the sagging Dallas secondary. Worst-case scenario, Hastings scoots for a first down. Best-case scenario, he outruns the Cowboys and scores the game-winning touchdown.

  “We were going to pull it out,” says Olsavsky. “I felt it.”

  Aware of O’Donnell’s reputation for being spineless, Cowboys defensive coordinator Dave Campo spent the game urging his linemen to thump the Steelers quarterback whenever possible. “We caught Pittsburgh by surprise by running zone blitzes,” Campo says. “We wanted to confuse their quarterback.” When the two teams had met to open the 1994 season, the Cowboys sacked O’Donnell nine times. The memory was in his head. Had to have been. Now, with a Super Bowl in the balance, Campo wisely called out “Zero!”—code for a nine-man blitz. Darren Woodson looked toward Brown and shouted, “Larry, be aggressive here! Be aggressive! They’re coming your way!” As O’Donnell dropped back, he was harassed by a collapsing wall of defenders. He did what a good quarterback does—threw to the spot, knowing exactly where Hastings was supposed to be and trusting the route-running abilities of Pittsburgh’s second-leading receiver.

  Yet instead of slanting one way, Hastings went the other. For the second time that evening, Brown was in the exact right location at the exact right time—all alone with a football fluttering his way. It was Christmas and Easter and Kwanzaa and Purim rolled into one, and Brown eagerly caught the ball and dashed 33 yards to the lip of the end zone.

  “It was like a cartoon—noooooooooooooooooo! Poof!” says Hastings. “It was a pretty bad feeling—like, ‘This cannot be happening.’ It’s one thing to get blown out and say, ‘OK, it wasn’t our Sunday.’ But to be that close, it’s pretty heartbreaking.”

  Emmitt Smith scored shortly thereafter, and the game was done. The Steelers had held Smith to 49 yards rushing, limited Irvin to 5 catches for 76 yards, contained Aikman to a single touchdown pass…and still lost.

  Cowboys: 27.

  Steelers: 17.

  “We gave away the Super Bowl,” said running back Erric Pegram. “We gave the darn thing away.”

  What few Steelers could know in the immediate aftermath was that while O’Donnell was responsible for interception number one, it was the inexperienced Hastings who, in the final minutes, cost his team the victory with the errant route. Hastings later publicly blamed O’Donnell, kicking off a mini–war of words among ex-Steelers. “That definitely wasn’t Neil’s fault,” says Tomczak. “He made a read and it was right. Mistakes were committed by other people. But the quarterback always gets blamed.”

  Though O’Donnell turned into Pittsburgh’s No. 1 goat, Brown found gridiron salvation. Upon entering the locker room, he was greeted by an unruly serenade of “L. B.! L. B.! L. B.!” The twelfth-round pick was now Super Bowl XXX’s unlikely MVP. He would get the car and—as a pending free agent—a $12 million contract to join the Oakland Raiders.

  Wrote Shaughnessy in the Boston Globe: “[Brown] was like a backup catcher who wins a World Series game by getting hit by a pitch with the bases loaded. He did almost nothing to earn the trophy. Twice Brown was standing in the open field, minding his own business, when an O’Donnell pass came his way. Both of his catches could easily have been made by Mike Greenwell, Jose Canseco, Charlie Brown or Downtown Julie Brown.”

  Few could argue.

  “Man, Larry knows he’s lucky,” says Briggs, the Cowboy defensive back. “If I’m standing there like he was, minding my own business, I’m the Super Bowl MVP. Shoot, that would have been sweet.”

  Briggs pauses, taking a minute to reconsider.

  “But you wanna know something?” he says. “Larry was a great dude. And guys like that deserve to have their moments too. So God bless Larry Brown. God bless him.”

  Chapter 25

  THE FALL

  Whether it was because they were chasing hos or because they had radio shows or because they were getting drunk or doing drugs or having sex parties—whatever it was, after Super Bowl XXX guys on the Cowboys couldn’t possibly be as focused on football as they were before they tasted all that.

  —Jean-Jacques Taylor, Cowboys beat writer

  TWO WEEKS AFTER the Super Bowl, the Cowboys met with President Bill Clinton at the (real) White House. This being the team’s third championship in four years, a trip to the nation’s capital no longer had the same cachet. It was old hat—the reason a mere eighteen players attended.

  As is standard ritual, the president held an East Room ceremony, during which he said some kind words, then was presented with Cowboy memorabilia. Afterward the players formed a line in the Blue Room, and Clinton gradually worked his way down, shaking hands and engaging in a bit of chitchat.

  Near the end of the line stood seldom-used running back David Lang, rookie tight end Eric Bjornson, and Charles Haley, who had just won his league-record fifth Super Bowl ring. As Clinton approached, Lang nudged Bjornson and, with a sly grin, said, “Watch this.” When the president stuck out his hand, Lang softly grabbed his bicep and said, “Hey, man, you’re sorta big!” Clinton was flattered. “Thanks,” he said. “Not too bad for an older guy, right?”

  With that, Haley leaned over and whispered softly to the leader of the free world, “Don’t listen to him, Mr. President. He’s bisexual.”

  What?

  “Clinton has this awkward look on his face,” says Bjornson. “And I feel like the biggest horse’s ass, standing between these two clowns. It was typical crazy, from-the-seat-of-his-pants Charles.”

  It was also one of the final moments of innocent mischief for a football team that had long ago lost its moral compass, its personnel judgment, and, in many respects, its way. As the Cowboys shuffled off from 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue and back out into the real world, a bitter truth awaited. Throughout football history, few dynasties stretched beyond a decade. Oh, Vince Lombardi’s Green Bay Packers had dominated the NFL during much of the ’60s, and the Steelers of the ’70s and 49ers of the ’80s certainly boasted impressive runs. But every successful franchise inevitably encountered a tipping point, be it influenced by age, player turnover, or a mounting lack of discipline.

  For the Dallas Cowboys, a team that somehow managed to overcome one drama after another in 1995, all three would apply.

  Many believe the downfall officially commenced five wee
ks after Super Bowl XXX when, at 11:45 P.M. on March 3, 1996, Mike Bailey, a manager of the Residence Inn in Irving, Texas, picked up the phone and dialed 273-2450, the number of the local police department:

  OPERATOR: “Irving Police Department. This is Laura…”

  BAILEY: “We have two individuals that keep checking into our hotel and…the better word is, they’re prostitutes. They’ve been running the rooms and when we have to clean up after them we have been finding cocaine and crack and marijuana. Well, they’re back…”

  At 11:55 P.M., four policemen arrived at the hotel. When Officer Matt Drumm knocked on the door of Room 624, he heard shuffling, but nobody answered. “When we did get the door [partially] open, they had the security bar on it,” said Drumm. “A big cloud of marijuana smoke came out.”

  The door was finally opened by Angela Renee Beck, a twenty-two-year-old “model” and former dancer at the Men’s Club of Dallas. She was wearing a black miniskirt and halter top. Standing inside the room was another “model” and former Men’s Club dancer, Jasmine Jennifer Nabwangu, twenty-one, and two football players. One, former Dallas tight end Alfredo Roberts, remained silent. The other did not.

  “Hey,” said Michael Irvin, “can I tell you who I am?”

  “I know who you are,” replied Drumm.

  With that Irvin, wearing baggy blue jeans but no shirt, hung his head.

  The officers confiscated 10.3 grams of cocaine and more than an ounce of marijuana, as well as rolling papers, a six-inch tube used for snorting cocaine, and two vibrators. Because Beck claimed the drugs were hers, Irvin, Roberts, and Nabwangu were not arrested. But for the brightest of the Dallas Cowboys’ stars, the succeeding attention was far worse than a night in the clink. A local television station broke the story, and rival networks quickly followed with their own reports of Irvin’s soiree.