“In previous years it wasn’t enough to just win,” says Taylor, the Morning News writer. “You had to win in a certain way. In the late nineties it started coming off as, ‘Well, we won. How many teams would love to be in our situation?’ Once you start thinking like that your downfall has begun, because the drive for perfection has stopped.”
Especially damaging was the impact of the Cowboys’ $35 million cornerback. Following the ’96 season, Sanders—who later confessed that, beneath the flash, he was terribly depressed—intentionally steered his car off a cliff in an attempted suicide. Upon surviving, he denounced his past and devoted his life to serving Jesus Christ. To his credit, Sanders woke up to the idea that flashy jewelry and fast cars do not guarantee happiness. To his discredit, he needed to express this new enlightenment to absolutely everyone. Sanders turned into a walking JESUS SAVES billboard, urging all to see the light and attend the ever-increasing number of Bible study sessions held at Valley Ranch.
For the devoutly Christian Cowboys who were called to Jesus the way men like Irvin, Haley, and Newton were called to fishnet stockings, Sanders was the perfect teammate. For the rest of the players, though, he was an annoying distraction. Where was the Sanders who talked trash? Who took his greatest pride in shutting down receivers? In sports, it’s no secret that while zealously religious teams might be bound for the pearly gates, they rarely win. “When Deion found God, football study time turned into Bible study time, and a lot of us didn’t like that,” says Kevin Smith, the veteran cornerback. “Guys should be studying football on a Wednesday at twelve o’clock instead of going to a forty-five-minute Bible study. So what happens is Deion gets all the bottom feeders to follow his lead because he’s Deion Sanders. And before long the emphasis on football is woefully reduced.”
An especially contentious locker room issue centered on the team’s official chaplain. For fifteen years, the position had been held by John Weber, a former collegiate wrestler at Dakota Wesleyan University who approached Christianity in a soft, genteel manner. Sanders felt Weber’s mannerisms weren’t bombastic enough for a football team, and did his all to have the Cowboys replace him with Terry Hornbuckle, the high-octane founder of Arlington’s Victory Temple Bible Church. The ensuing debate among Cowboy players turned racial. The whites supported Weber, who was also white, while most African-Americans leaned toward Hornbuckle, an African-American. “So even though the Cowboys never admitted it, we brought in Hornbuckle because Deion demanded it,” says Kevin Smith. “He was there every Wednesday during Bible study, talking up God and all. Personally, I didn’t back that change. It didn’t seem fair and it led to a whole lot of negativity.”
Hornbuckle failed to last long with the Cowboys, which was probably a good thing. Nine years later he would be convicted by a Tarrant County jury on rape charges involving three young women, including two members of his church.
If there was one thing Jerry Jones was certain of entering the 1998 season, it was that his franchise was about to rediscover its greatness. Sometimes, the Cowboy owner believed, dramatic change—no matter how risky or unpopular—could result in wondrous things. “It’s not always pleasant,” Jones says. “But leadership means making tough decisions.”
Hence, after two frustrating, mediocre seasons, Jones urged his head coach to resign. He still respected Switzer; hell, he loved Switzer like a brother. But even Jones, too often blinded by loyalty to his inept friend, could see the reality: Switzer was not capable of leading a Dallas renaissance. That January, a heavy-hearted Switzer stepped aside. “I knew what I had to do,” Switzer says. “I was sad, but I knew.”
As a replacement, Jones went outside of his personal circle, announcing on February 12, 1998, that he was hiring a well-respected Pittsburgh Steelers offensive coordinator named Chan Gailey.
Ironically, with Gailey’s arrival Jones had come full circle—the man who had famously fired Tom Landry had now hired Tom Landry minus the hat (and, apparently, the ability and know-how). Gailey was a no-nonsense disciplinarian; a devout Christian; a soft speaker who rarely wore his emotions on his sleeve. Yet the new leader of the Cowboys had no idea what he was walking into. Namely, a cornucopia of arrogance and laziness and indifference and zealotry. Namely, a nightmare.
If the Cowboys maintained any hope of recapturing what they had lost in discipline and preparedness after the Jimmy Johnson years, they needed a throwback—a take-no-crap drill sergeant who would pound men into the ground, then bring them back up with stirring, Lombardi-esque spewings. They needed a coach who would confront Sanders and say, more or less, “I love Jesus too—now get him the hell out of my locker room!” They needed a coach who would gather the impressionable younger players into a room, point to a picture of Aikman or safety Darren Woodson, the team’s two hardest workers and most unselfish members, and say, “Follow them.” They needed a coach who knew Xs and Os, but who more important knew how to delegate to his assistants. They needed a coach who could stand up to Jerry Jones and say, “If you draft Kavika Pittman, I will bust you up.” They needed a coach who knew what it meant to be a Dallas Cowboy; who respected the history and believed in the future.
Really, they needed Jimmy Johnson. Or at least somebody like him.
Alas, the new coach was no Jimmy Johnson.
Gailey was only five months into his new job on that fateful afternoon of July 29, 1998, when Michael Irvin, heart of the Cowboys, took his barber’s scissors and thrust them into the neck of Everett McIver, the gargantuan offensive lineman. Gailey was horrified—by the act, of course. But surely also by the aftermath. As the eighteen-stitch gash on McIver’s neck gradually healed, Jones did everything in his power to make certain the incident disappeared. Really, to make certain Irvin—already on probation for cocaine possession—would not be shipped off to jail.
Once upon a time, when Jones first bought the Cowboys and installed Johnson as his head coach, the organization had preached accountability. You miss a block, you admit it. You skip a meeting, you face the consequences. When Jones was hammered by the Dallas media for the cutthroat manner in which he fired Landry, he stepped up and admitted wrongdoing.
But now, nearly a decade later, the Cowboys were engaged in a fullscale cover-up. McIver was offered a high-six-figure payoff to keep the story under wraps. (He accepted.) Gailey publicly dismissed the brawl as “horseplay.” When those involved in what came to be known as “Scissorsgate” met with the judge overseeing Irvin’s probation, they laughed it off as a simple case of McIver’s having engulfed Irvin in a bear hug that led to some playful wrestling and an accidental cut. No big deal. Ha, ha, ha, hee, hee, hee.
Of course, the incident was a big deal. A huge deal. Though the Cowboys under Jimmy Johnson and Barry Switzer often lacked discipline, their talent always compensated. Now, discipline was at an all-time low, and the talent was fading fast. Gailey would guide the Cowboys to a 10–6 record and first-round playoff loss, then last just one more season before being fired after an 8–8 debacle. “Chan tried his best,” says Denne Freeman, who covered the Cowboys for the Associated Press. “But he probably didn’t realize the mess he was getting into.”
In the end, Gailey could do only so much with so little. With his skills in decline and his brain scrambled by repeated concussions, Aikman was never again a marquee player. In 2000 he threw for 7 touchdowns and 14 interceptions, then retired. Though Emmitt Smith lasted with Dallas through 2002, he, too, was gradually slipping. The drive and determination that had been a hallmark of his early years was replaced by selfishness and a single-minded personal goal—to become the league’s all-time leading rusher. Smith exceeded 1,200 yards in each of the 1998, ’99, and ’00 seasons, but in the words of one teammate, “didn’t give a shit about us anymore. He was all about Emmitt, Emmitt, Emmitt.” Like far too many faded stars, Smith saw his career end ingloriously: Left for dead by the Cowboys, he played the 2003 and ’04 seasons with the lowly Arizona Cardinals, running tentatively behind a porous offensive line and brin
ging to mind Willie Mays’s sad final days with the Mets. He retired with an unparalleled 18,355 career rushing yards, but with his dignity tarnished.
Irvin, meanwhile, suffered the harshest blow. In a game at Philadelphia during the 1999 season, Eagles defensive back Tim Hauck tackled him head-first into the turf. As Irvin lay motionless on the Veterans Stadium field, suffering from temporary paralysis, Philadelphia’s fans stood and cheered. Finally, they had found a way to stop The Playmaker. “That was as big a victory as we’d had in Philly since the 1980 World Series,” says Brian Hickey, former managing editor of the Philadelphia City Paper and one of the loudest hecklers that day. “That guy killed us for years, and finally we took him out.”
Irvin’s malady—a cervical spinal cord injury—was more serious than anyone imagined. Doctors told the receiver he was born with such a fragile spinal cord that, should he continue with his NFL career, a future injury of grave consequence was likely.
He would never play football again.
“That was huge,” says Woodson. “It cut out the heart of our team.”
To some, Irvin’s downfall was an isolated tragedy, the sad decline of a once-great wide receiver. To others, it was the natural continuation of an event that had occurred fifteen months earlier, when Irvin took a scissors to the neck of Everett McIver.
The blood covering the floor that day did not drain merely from a man, but from a franchise.
Chapter 26
REBIRTH
I ran the fast life and I never stopped and thought, How is this affecting my family? How is this affecting my kids? How does this affect the public perception of me? When you’re walking with a clouded mind like I did, you can’t see the things you’re doing wrong. But when that cloud is lifted you see the errors of your ways. Do I regret it? Yes. Would I change it? No way in hell.
—Nate Newton, Cowboys offensive lineman
ON THE AFTERNOON of August 3, 2007, Michael Irvin wandered into the McKinley Grand hotel in downtown Canton, Ohio, and paced the hallways. He paced left. He paced right. He wiggled his fingers and twitched his toes and took one nervous breath after another. When someone asked for a photograph, Irvin smiled widely. When a group of kids requested his autograph, Irvin signed away.
But behind the façade was a genuinely un-Irvin reaction—The Playmaker was nervous.
In roughly twenty-four hours, Irvin would be called upon to make a speech at his Pro Football Hall of Fame induction ceremony, and the man who was never, ever, ever at a loss for words was coming up blank. “I have no idea what I’m gonna say,” he muttered, shrugging his shoulders. “I mean, I have a lot of things in my head that I want to get out. I’m thinking of just going up there and speaking from the heart.”
Standing several feet away, former Bills running back and fellow inductee Thurman Thomas possessed the carefree look of a retiree on a hammock—he had written his speech long ago. The same went for the other inductees: Charlie Sanders, Bruce Matthews, and Roger Wehrli. (Gene Hickerson was ill, so his son, Bob, would speak on his behalf.) They were all relaxed, all prepared, all enjoying the moment. “I’m sure I’ll be OK,” Irvin said. “Well, I think I might be probably OK.”
The following evening the Dallas Cowboys’ all-time leading receiver, who had retired with 750 receptions, 11,904 yards, 65 touchdowns, and three Super Bowl championships, strode to a podium inside Fawcett Stadium. He took several deep breaths, looked out among the thousands of faces, and just…spoke.
He spoke about his boyhood in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, where seventeen brothers and sisters shared two bedrooms. He spoke about his collegiate career at the University of Miami, where he learned that a merging of hard work and swagger conquers all.
Mostly, he spoke about a man who had once believed the only way to live was lavishly and the only speed to travel was 5 million mph. He looked at Sandy, his wife of seventeen years, and apologized for violating her trust, and looked toward his mother, Pearl, and thanked her for creating a man.
Then he asked his sons, Michael, ten, and Elijah, eight, to rise. The tears streamed from Irvin’s eyes and onto his cheeks, where they nestled like tiny ponds.
“That’s my heart right there,” he said, pointing to his offspring. “That’s my heart. When I am on that threshing floor, I pray. I say, ‘God, I have my struggles and I made some bad decisions, but whatever you do, whatever you do, don’t let me mess this up.’
“I say, ‘Please, help me raise them for some young lady so that they can be a better husband than I. Help me raise them for their kids so that they could be a better father than I.’ And I tell you guys to always do the right thing so you can be a better role model than Dad. I sat right here where you are last year and I watched the Class of 2006: Troy Aikman, Warren Moon, Harry Carson, Rayfield Wright, John Madden, and the late, great Reggie White represented by his wife, Sara White. And I said, ‘Wow. That’s what a Hall of Famer is.’”
Irvin’s voice cracked. His tears streamed rapidly. Here was a broken man. Here was a saved man.
“Certainly, I am not that,” he continued. “I doubted I would ever have the chance to stand before you today. So when I returned home I spoke with Michael and Elijah. I said, ‘That’s how you do it, son. You do it like they did it.’ Michael asked, he said, ‘Dad, do you ever think we will be there?’ And I didn’t know how to answer that. And it returned me to that threshing floor. This time I was voiceless, but my heart cried out…
“I wanted to stand in front of my boys and say, ‘Do it like your dad’—like any proud dad would want to. Why must I go through so much? At that moment a voice came over me and said, ‘Look up, get up, and don’t ever give up. You tell everyone or anyone that has ever doubted, thought they did not measure up, or wanted to quit, you tell them to look up, get up, and don’t ever give up.’
“Thank you, and may God bless you.”
For a moment, the 12,787 spectators made nary a sound. Then the applause began—tepid at first, but building rapidly. By the time Irvin took a step back, he was overwhelmed by the roar of human thunder. An explosion that lasted and lasted and lasted.
Among those in attendance were two dozen former Cowboy teammates, including Aikman, Emmitt Smith, Jay Novacek, Nate Newton, Steve Walsh, James Washington, and Darren Woodson. They were present to support their friend, but also to bear witness to his rebirth. Many of the old Cowboys had changed their ways with the passing of years. They looked back at the strip clubs and hookers and Cowboys Café with both joy and humiliation—joy over the excitement and camaraderie of it all, humiliation over having treated women not as people, but objects; over having naïvely believed fame and fortune were God-given rights, not temporary luxuries; over discarding wives and children for short-lived excesses; over trading in humility for ego.
Just a few years earlier, Newton had paid a visit to Robert Jones, the former Cowboys linebacker, to set things straight. Through his years in Dallas Jones had been faithful to his wife and children, and countless teammates had mocked him for it. “I’m so sorry how I treated you when we were in Dallas,” Newton said to Jones. “You were one of the guys who lived his life the way it’s supposed to be lived, and now look at you. You’re still with your wife. I’m divorced, and she was a good woman. You did things the right way and we made fun of you for it. We were wrong.”
It was eerily similar to an encounter that took place on October 15, 2001, when Jones was in his final NFL season, with the Redskins. Before a game against the Cowboys, Jones was told by a teammate that Irvin was outside the locker room asking for him. During their time together in Dallas, the two players had loathed each other. In Jones’s mind, Irvin was a bully who felt compelled to harass anyone refusing to live the fast life. And now Irvin wanted him? No way. “Man, you’re full of shit,” said Jones. “No way Mike’s out there.” Yet when Jones stuck his head through door, there was Irvin. He hugged Jones and kissed him on the cheek. “What’s that for?” Jones asked.
“Man, I’m so proud of you,”
Irvin said. “And I apologize for everything I ever did to you. You were righteous. I wasn’t.”
Now, in Canton, with the jersey-wearing and face-painted fans having departed and darkness settling in, Irvin was hosting a party in a large tent on the Hall grounds. There were mounds of food. White leather couches and cascading floral arrangements. The Pointer Sisters singing their hits. Jerry Jones dancing away as his wife, Gene, sat in the rear and laughed over a handful of plain M&M’s. Early on, Irvin called for all his former teammates to climb atop the stage for a group photograph. Among those present were Erik Williams, once responsible for a near-fatal DUI accident; Washington, who had chased after women with an unquenchable thirst; Newton, the man arrested in 2001 for smuggling a mere 213 pounds of marijuana.
More than a decade after their Super Bowl XXX triumph, these Cowboys were different men. Fat had replaced muscle. Gray hairs had started to take up turf. Some possessed run-of-the-mill, 9-to–5 jobs. Others had undergone religious transformations. Washington, once a trash-talking safety, was now a smooth-talking Los Angeles radio host. Even Newton, the largest of the large livers, was primarily focused on helping his son Tré, a star running back at Southlake Carroll High School, attain a college scholarship. (He went on to sign with the University of Texas.)
By 1:30 A.M., the stars who had once reigned over the Dallas nightlife were all gone, back to their hotels and snuggled beneath the covers. In fact, only one member of the Cowboys remained. His tie loosened, the top button of his white dress shirt undone, the man led his wife onto the dance floor and gently kissed her cheek. As the couple began a slow groove, Michael Irvin smiled widely.
It was a facial expression millions of Cowboys fans had come to know. Once upon a time, Michael Irvin smiled when he scored touchdowns. He smiled when he won Super Bowls. He smiled as he strolled into court, a mink coat draped over his shoulders. He even smiled in police mug shots.
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