Friday, December 6, 1996

Cowboys' star has been tarnished

By Greg Cote / Knight-Ridder Newspapers (Dec. 6, 1996)

Who says the Cowboys no longer dominate the NFL? Three of this season's eight league-imposed drug suspensions and seven of the past 13 overall - that's dominance!

This isn't a team. It's a cartel.

The Cowboys don't have fans anymore. They have lookouts.

Other teams win one for The Gipper. These guys win one for Pablo Escobar.

Leon Lett completed a rare football triple play this week when the league suspended him for one year, after earlier drug-ousters of Michael Irvin and Shante Carver. There's probably still time for Dallas to get a fourth guy busted; then again, you don't wanna be greedy. It's unbecoming.

Lett got caught because he continued to use dope (reports say cocaine) even though last year's drug suspension mandated that he provide urine samples several times every week this season. A source in Dallas told me Lett was making mandatory john trips 11 times a week. Yet continued to use.

Do the words "rocket scientist" come to mind?

It is fashionable to say oh-poor-Leon, the man needs help. And he does. But it's just as accurate to say oh-dumb-Leon, the man was selfish.

"Leon let the team down," as running backs coach Joe Brodsky put it - pun not intended, but quite fitting.

The Cowboys have fast become an embarrassment to the league and themselves, the butt of jokes. Irvin, now the big Lettdown and all the other stuff has done image damage to the franchise in much the same way UM's years of improprieties chipped and chipped at the Hurricanes' good name.

In Dallas, the very name "America's Team" has taken on a mocking quality. Like, yeah, right.

Big D? Must stand for Dope.

Valley Ranch? They ought to rechristen the Cowboys' training site Valley Stench.

The off-field garbage tarnishes those three Super Bowl trophies they've collected the past four seasons, beyond making it more likely there won't be a fourth in five years.

"The star has been diminished," in the words of Bill Bates, the 14-year veteran.

You feel sorry for the right-doing Cowboys such as Bates and Emmitt Smith. Emmitt - class beyond his game, a college graduate, a family man - sits in the Cowboys clubhouse like a regal emerald in a setting of rotted wood.

In Dallas, when they talk about an offensive lineman holding ... they don't mean on the football field.

When a Cowboy comes out of a game to take a blow ... he's not catching his breath.

The signs in the Dallas locker room don't read NO SMOKING. They read, WHO'S GOT PAPERS?

The Cowboys employ scouts. But not to watch other teams. To look out for cops.

"We don't have a good image anymore," Troy Aikman understates it. "We've taken some hits in the public relations department."

Fidel Castro gets better PR.

The drug busts the past two years are just the hub of the stink. So much else swirls queasily around.

I don't know of any other NFL locker stall besides Deion Sanders' that is equipped with Louis Vitton and Versace boutiques.

What other team's equipment staff includes a full-time jeweler?

Remember when Erik Williams was accused in 1994 (this was just after his drunk-driving arrest) of assaulting a 17-year-old topless dancer? He skated when she declined to testify following an out-of-court settlement with Erik.

Later we came to learn about "The White House," Cowboys players' nickname for their infamous, private, away-from-the-wives getaway where hookers were routinely taken.

Why were we not surprised when we saw Cowboys players traveling to Super Bowl practices in limousines? Based on recent activities, these guys don't need team buses, they need smoke-tinted Cadillacs.

When the Cowboys are winter visitors to northern opponents and snow is piled high behind the Dallas bench ... that's not snow.

This might be the only NFL locker room where you can find not only heroes, but also heroin.

No team better understands what it means to be running, whether it's in short yardage, or in the Gulf of Mexico, one step ahead of the Marine Patrol.

Jerry Jones struck that stadium marketing deal with Pepsi. So why weren't we surprised when so many of his players decided to stick with coke?

Cowboys helmets used to have tiny stars signifying outstanding plays. Now they have tiny crack pipes.

All the while you've got coach Barry Switzer (the one who oversaw such lawlessness while at Oklahoma) blithely wearing blinders.

"I don't wanna know," Switzer actually said when asked about Lett, when the latest test-positive was still a rumor. "I never wanna know."

The Cowboys lurch toward another playoff berth as the PR fires burn all around them, because talent trumps turmoil.

Wouldn't it feel right, though, if early elimination gave these players ample time to wonder what might have been without their transgressions?

Then, you could talk about the Cowboys' season going up in smoke, and, alas ... you wouldn't be kidding.

(Greg Cote is a sports columnist for the Miami Herald. Write to him at: Miami Herald, One Herald Plaza, Miami, Fla. 33132.)

(c) 1996, The Miami Herald.

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