Tuesday, August 13, 1996

Cowboys sign Smith for eight years
By Gary Myers
New York Daily News
(August 13, 1996)

(KRT) - Emmitt Smith is on pace to break Walter Payton's career rushing record. And by signing an eight-year, $48 million deal with the Cowboys on Monday, which includes a league-record $15 million signing bonus, Smith broke new ground by becoming the highest-paid non-quarterback in NFL history.

And it's a deal quite fitting for Smith, rushing king four of the last five years and arguably the best player in the league. His $6 million average trails only teammate Troy Aikman ($6.25 million average), who signed an eight-year, $50 million deal in 1993, and brings him even with the average of New England's Drew Bledsoe and slightly ahead of the averages of Miami's Dan Marino ($5.97 million) and Denver's John Elway ($5.9 million). And he surpassed teammate Deion Sanders, averaging $5 million, as the NFL's highest-paid non-quarterback.

"This is a cornerstone event for this franchise," Cowboys owner Jerry Jones said. "Emmitt has no peer in my mind, no peer today in sports."

Smith has rushed for 8,956 yards in six seasons, the 13th-highest total in history. Payton is No. 1 at 16,726. Payton averaged 1,287 yards in his 13-year career. Smith, 27, is averaging 1,493. He is coming off a season in which he rushed for a career-high 1,773 yards and scored an NFL-record 25 touchdowns.

"It's going to be a test to see how I feel in another eight years," Smith said. "I think I have a lot of run left in me."

Jones promised he would take care of Smith before the season started. And he did. "The facts are he's challenging the very best that have ever played this position," Jones said.

Once Sanders signed his seven-year, $35 million contract last year, with a then-record $13 million bonus, it was only a matter of time before Jones signed Smith. In the offseason, Smith hired agent Eugene Parker, who also represents Sanders.

The deal allows Smith to finish his career with Dallas.

"I believe if you start something, you finish it," Smith said. "I played all my football at one high school, at one college (Florida), and I wanted to play all my professional football for the Dallas Cowboys."

When Smith was a rookie, he held out until five days before the season opener. When that deal was up, he missed the first two games of the 1993 season - he still won the rushing title - holding out for a four-year, $13.6 million contract. That contract had this season remaining on it with a salary of $2 million. Smith would have become a free agent at the end of the season, but the Cowboys owned right of first refusal.

This time, there were none of the hard feelings that accompanied the previous negotiations. Jones said he learned from mistakes made the last two times. Smith said things went wrong the first two times and egos got involved.

How did the Cowboys have the cap room to sign Smith? He already was counting $3 million against the cap, and they picked up additional room with Michael Irvin's five-game suspension and Shante Carver's six-game ban.

Two weeks ago, Smith said he thought Dallas might take him for granted in talks.

"I think the Cowboys understand how important the game of football is to me and what it means to me as a football player to go out and set goals and achieve those goals," he said then. "They probably utilize that as a tool against me in negotiations. Knowing that fact, how determined I am to achieve certain goals in my career, they say he can't afford to miss games."

But all along, Smith expressed confidence Jones would get the deal done.

"All of his words became reality today," Smith said. "I had a lot of faith in Jerry."

(c) 1996, New York Daily News. Distributed by Knight-Ridder/Tribune Information Services.

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