Tuesday, July 16, 1996

Cowboys Fans React to Plea

By MELISSA WILLIAMS
Associated Press Writer

DALLAS (AP) - With the self-anointed Playmaker turned Plea Maker, Dallas Cowboys fans are feeling disappointed, relieved and cynical.

"I think it shows you can get away with it if you want to," J.R. Garcia, a 39-year-old aircraft mechanic, said of Michael Irvin's no-contest plea to a drug charge. "But he's a great football player; you can't take that away from him.

"People forget, it's amazing. When we win this next Super Bowl this coming year - because we will - they'll forget."

The Dallas Cowboys' star receiver pleaded no contest Monday to second-degree felony cocaine possession in exchange for four years' deferred probation, a $10,000 fine and dismissal of misdemeanor marijuana possession charges.

If he stays clean for the four years, the charge will be cleared from his record.

"The simple fact that he's got money" enabled him to avoid a jail sentence, theorized Brent Thomas, an 18-year-old college student having dinner at a Dallas restaurant.

But his companion, 19-year-old student Rodney Bowers of Irving, disagreed.

"I don't know, maybe he was innocent," said Bowers. "I think he would have gotten off."

Irvin likely made the deal with prosecutors "just to get it over with," Bowers added. "Plus, the season's about to start...and I don't think he wanted anything else to come out."

Bowers was one of several fans to comment on the plea's timing. It came two days before the start of training camp and just as Irvin's lawyers were about to resume cross-examining Rachelle Smith, a 24-year-old topless dancer.

Ms. Smith testified outside the presence of the jury Friday that Irvin had used drugs with her and another dancer at three different all-night sex parties at the same motel where police found him with cocaine and marijuana on March 4.

Though some people worried aloud how Irvin's tarnished reputation would affect young fans, he maintained some believers among the pre-teen set.

"He's still my favorite wide receiver," said Tevis Yates, 11, of Artesia, N.M., who was visiting Dallas. "It doesn't bother me. I think he was at the wrong place at the wrong time."

Others contend nothing Irvin does on the field can erase the seedy images left by trial descriptions of drugs and group sex.

As 31-year-old engineer Mark Walker of Palmyra, Mo., observed wryly: "He can't be Roger Staubach."

Cowboys Chatroom.....Dallas Cowboys.....Back to Reporter OnLine