Camp and Circumstance
Jordan Mackay goes to Camp Cowboy.
(Page 3 of 8)
Sweaty Behemoths
For some reason the Club Cars—those golf carts assigned to the players for travel hundreds of feet at a time from the dorms to the fields to the cafeteria and back again—really made camp seem like camp to me. Perhaps it was the juxtaposition of incredibly large men and petite vehicles. One day, I sat outside the cafeteria as the players assembled for lunch, buzzing up and parking their Club Cars on the grass. Before long I counted more than twenty-five vehicles on the lawn and, just like a real parking lot, the players would come out after lunch and have to hunt around to find where they’d left their cars.
I wondered what it was like to be a member of a professional football team, what it’s like hanging out with all these wealthy ballplayers—eating together, sleeping in the dorms, driving those little cars? And I didn’t really get to find out. Journalists are not given too much time to question the players. And if you see a Cowboy, you have to be paparazzi quick to talk to him before he buzzes off. But when I finally did get to talk to a few of the players I found them all to be witty raconteurs who rarely hesitate when levying damaging criticisms against the team, the league, and most of all, their teammates.
78 and Coach
Max Knake, a rookie from Texas Christian University, who faces long odds of making the team had the following revelation about the social side of camp: “Oh, it’s great. I couldn’t ask for a better situation playing football, of course. You have to consider that. Dorms are quiet. I go to sleep really early. I just put in a movie or something and go to sleep. Food’s good. A lot of camaraderie. You know, everybody’s pretty much first class, the organization’s first class.”
This is a pretty rosy view of Camp Cowboy considering a recent Associated Press article that began, “The Dallas Cowboys have taken unprecedented steps to prevent a repeat of player misbehavior, including the installation of cameras in the dormitories at St. Edward’s University.” Of course no one close to the team will comment on what’s going on except the source from the above-mentioned article who made the ominous statement, “We know when a player leaves his room after curfew.”
In his first press conference after rejoining the team, Michael Irvin spoke about how fun it was to be back. He laughed about staying up late playing cards in Emmit’s room and the simple joys of being one of the guys. That’s the kind of life I like to imagine at Camp Cowboy—cards with Emmit, smores with Troy, panty raids on the girls camp across the lake with Michael.
Sherman Williams, the backup running back, was concerned with the temperature and defined camp as “a melting thing.” Not one to hold back true feelings, when asked what he really feels about training camp, he said “Well, basically, you know, you have to be in a dorm and curfew at eleven o’clock and things like that, but it’s really not a big deal. I think this year’s camp is a lot shorter than the last couple of camps so that’s making it a lot better.” Overall, he was sanguine about the experience, saying “Yeah, we have plenty of good times, you know. It feels good to get out here and play football, you have to love the game and love the sport.”
The best part of having the players in camp is the stories about these guys that start rolling in after they’ve been around a couple of weeks. People start seeing them all over town in odd, sometimes compromising situations. Like the encounter a friend of a friend’s friend had with a sparkling convertible Mercedes that starting honking behind him on Congress Avenue. The driver doesn’t know who’s honking until the Mercedes pulls up beside him and it’s Michael Irvin at the wheel with a curvy blonde riding shotgun. Irvin asks the guy if he’ll give him directions to get to I-35. The man, who was not a Cowboy fan, answers Bartelbyesquely “I prefer not to give you directions, sir,” and drives off.
For the players, Camp Cowboy is work. And for many, it’s the deciding factor as to whether they’ll even have a job in the fall. And though I wanted to pry behind the scenes, behind the stony-faces intoning sports cliche after sports cliche, the gravity with which the Cowboys regarded training camp was manifest in every interview. And I just want to say that I respect that point of view, and I wish them luck, because I have to take training camp one day at a time, and can only try as hard as I can try, and will just hope that God will smile on me and give me the strength to come back and write another article again next season.
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