Boys Will Be Boys by Jeff Pearlman Page A

would lose their first game. But only the arrival of Jerry Jones lightened the mood. The new owner went locker to locker, shaking hands and offering reassurances. “We’re building something special,” he told defensive lineman Jim Jeffcoat. “It might take time, but it’ll be worth the wait. Just be patient.”
    Here was a different side to the new Cowboys owner, who, after an awful introductory press conference, dug himself an even deeper hole by firing one holdover employee after another, then insisting that the team’s vaunted cheerleaders dress more skimpily and behave more provocatively (following a near revolt by fourteen of the women, Jones backtracked). Beyond the blunders and buffoonery, however, was a disarming man who lavished first-class treatment upon his players. The Cowboys led the league in team-hosted shindigs, in golf outings, in lavish presents like golf clubs and expensive liquor. Jones placed suggestion boxes around Valley Ranch and rarely took criticism personally. “If you could get any of his detractors to spend five minutes with Jerry, he would have zero detractors,” says Mike Fisher, who covered the team for the Fort Worth Star-Telegram. “Nobody talks about this stuff, but early on there was a Valley Ranch janitor who died while visiting Mexico. His family couldn’t get his body back to the U.S., so Jerry contacted the Mexican government and worked it out. Who does that?
    “Unfortunately,” says Fisher, “back then generosity didn’t guarantee wins.”
    Indeed.
    The true bottoming-out for the Cowboys may have come in Week 3, when a capacity crowd of 63,200 fans packed Texas Stadium for the new regime’s home debut. Traveling to Texas were the archrivalWashington Redskins, a once-mighty opponent which, like Dallas, was off to an 0–2 start (the Cowboys had fallen to Atlanta in Week 2). “Our rivalry is certainly as big as it ever was,” Washington coach Joe Gibbs said before the game. “The only difference now is that we are both trying to get a win.” In his ten years as a college head coach, Johnson had faced his fair share of humiliation. But nothing would ever compare with what came next.
    To kick off the afternoon, Jones escorted actress Elizabeth Taylor to the center of the field and asked referee Pat Haggerty if the cinematic diva might call the coin toss. With a straight face, Haggerty announced, “Captains of Dallas meet the captains from Washington! Captains from Washington meet Liz Taylor and Jerry Jones!”
    Dexter Manley, the Redskins’ star lineman, glanced at the weathered thespian as if she were a piece of rotted ham. “I didn’t want to shake their hands,” he said later. “This is football, man, not Hollywood.”
    Jones’s self-aggrandizing stunt infuriated Johnson. He watched with horror from the sideline, wondering aloud whether he was employed by a professional football team or a variety show. It was hardly the last time he would feel this way. Before long, the sideline would morph into a parade of celebrities and corporate bigwigs, ranging from Bill Cosby to Prince Bandar bin Sultan to Florida governor Lawton Chiles to country singer Charlie Pride to the Reverend Jesse Jackson.
    If the coin toss was a comedy, the game was a horror film.
    Washington 30, Dallas 7.
    The Cowboys compiled a mere ten first downs and were out-gained by 183 yards. Receiver Art Monk, a Redskin since 1980, pivoted toward a pack of reporters after the game and said dryly: “I was not covered four times out there today. That’s pretty unbelievable in the NFL.”
    Aikman was terrible, but, once again, so was the offensive line, which allowed four sacks and unyielding pressure. Walsh was inserted to start the fourth quarter, and he too was pummeled. The team’s only score came in the first quarter, when defensive end Jim Jeffcoat returned a fumble for a touchdown. “For the next three hours,” wroteDavid Casstevens in the Morning News, “Cowboys fans sat in unhappy,