Wednesday, September 4, 1996

No Free Passes For Cowboys
By JIM LITKE
AP Sports Writer
(Sept. 4, 1996)

At least one thing the National Football League has in common with real life: No free passes for the Dallas Cowboys any time soon.

It took Paul Tagliabue only a few minutes to establish that Tuesday morning. That was as much time as the NFL commissioner needed before rejecting an emergency request from owner Jerry Jones to let the Cowboys play in the Canadian Football League for the remainder of this season.

"I thought our guys only behaved badly off the field," began a fax sent to the league's Park Avenue office from the Cowboys' Valley Ranch headquarters. "Then I was forced to watch them play. Believe me, having them arrested actually crossed my mind.

"I was warned, but like everybody else, I didn't want to listen. The coaches kept telling me during training camp we'd have trouble beating the Winnipeg Blue Bombers, but I figured it was a joke."

After pointing out the Cowboys couldn't block, tackle, run, catch, throw or even line up correctly in Monday night's 22-6 loss to the Chicago Bears, the request took on a more personal tone.

"We haven't always seen eye-to-eye on things," Jones said, "but this move offers both of us something. I'll drop my $600 million lawsuit against the league, and you get the Super Bowl trophy back without arm-wrestling me for it. All we get is the chance to keep calling ourselves 'America's Team,' since the only people who believe that hooey now are Canadians, anyway."

It was signed, "Respectfully, Jerry."

OK, so we made up the part about it being signed "Respectfully."

And OK, we made the rest of it up, too.

But don't think something equally desperate wasn't on the mind of America's Salesman up until the moment he received news that running back Emmitt Smith wasn't hurt half as serious as first thought.

The exact moment when Jones began thinking this way is hard to pinpoint. It could have been as early as the first series, when his well-paid right tackle, Erik Williams, got hit with three penalties in four plays. Or it could have been the three successive series later in the game, when three of the Cowboys' most reliable bets screwed up in succession. First, Chris Boniol missed his first field-goal attempt in 27 tries. Then, quarterback Troy Aikman threw an interception. Finally, Smith fumbled a pitchout. By then, all was lost.

Even slow-to-catch-on-sometimes coach Barry Switzer recognized early that things were not happening with their usual precision.

"When you can't even line up right, it's just inexcusable. It starts at the top with me," Switzer said at Tuesday's postmortem, "and goes right on down."

Switzer is blameless for plenty - the suspensions that cost playmaker Michael Irvin a handful of games and defensive lineman Shante Carver a season's worth of them; the injuries that sidelined tight end Jay Novacek and limited some others; the quartet of defensive starters from last season's squad who became free agents and defected.

But if anyone failed to set the proper tone once those things happened, failed to hold people accountable for all the slacking off and slipping responsibility and the joke that training camp became, it was Switzer. His record of run-ins with the NCAA made it seem like he never stood for much during his coaching days at Oklahoma, but Switzer looks positively decisive in retrospect.

He has become such a wind sock since going to work for Jones that even though Switzer was right to keep his regulars in the game when Dallas was down by 19 points, just a whiff of criticism for not pulling Smith out of the game sooner had him turning on himself.

"I was thinking about it with seven or eight minutes left to play, but then I thought I'll be criticized for giving up," the coach said. "Now, I'll be criticized for leaving him in."

We won't know that for sure until Sunday. That's when the Giants come to town and the injury report on Smith will be a little clearer.

The Cowboys figured to be a little out of sync in the early going, but what happened Monday night was ridiculous. Now, they have to beat New York and then Indianapolis at home to offset likely losses at Buffalo and Philadelphia. And that is just to be in a position where Irvin's return still means something.

If Smith doesn't make it back before then, look out. The headlines in the Chicago papers predicting the Bears' rise and the Cowboys' demise on the evidence of just one game looked silly Tuesday morning.

"Dynasties don't begin that easily and they don't end that easily," Jones said, though for the moment, he hardly sounded like his old, persuasive self.
Maybe not.

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