Camp and Circumstance
Jordan Mackay goes to Camp Cowboy.
(Page 7 of 8)
Circumstance
We all know the team. Even if you’ve never sat in front of a television, sipped beer, and eaten potato chips from your arm chair on a Sunday afternoon, it’s a matter of cultural literacy to at least be familiar with the Big Three: Troy Aikman, Emmit Smith, Michael Irvin. These are the guys that make the whole thing go. Positionally, they’re the quarterback, running back, and wide receiver. They’re the prime movers on offense and at training camp these three guys are the celebrities that everyone’s there to see.
Kneeling
In the last couple of years, the Cowboys have been all over the news, from the sports page to the front page. They’ve managed to be the dominant team in football and have kept the tabloids busier than Elvis. And this combination of football prowess and bad-boy philandering is crack cocaine for sports fans, talk radio hosts, and newspaper columnists who fuel the hype machine that accompanies the team everywhere it goes.
Unquestionably the big story heading into camp was Michael Irvin. He’s been connected to more scandals in the past year than Bill Clinton, and even with the microscope of public attention more finely focused on him than ever, he’s continued to court trouble. All the way until July 17th, the day before players were due to report for camp, his arrival was in doubt due to a scandal-infested year. Among the accusations, the juicier include: Irvin found in a hotel with two topless dancers and ten grams of cocaine, Irvin and teammate Erik Williams accused of raping a woman at gun point (a charge of which they were recently absolved), the exposure of a Dallas plot to assassinate Irvin, defensive lineman Leon Lett suspended for substance abuse, and Irvin’s bizarre junket to San Francisco that’s left him accused of roughing a guy up in the basement of a strip club following an argument over a cellular phone. Earlier in the summer in the midst of all this public disgrace, Irvin claimed he was considering retirement. So the arrival of the prodigal receiver on check-in day was simultaneously the answer to and source of many questions.
On the field, the Cowboys story is not so sordid. Last year, they lost in the playoffs to an upstart expansion team, confirmation of their declining gridiron puissance. They’ve been hit hard by free-agency, and mid-July saw the retirement of two of Dallas’ best players, Jay Novacek and Charles Haley. The questions are manifold: Despite the losses of key cogs, can the three big stars affect a return to Superbowl form? Or have scandals and distractions earthed this former high-flying incarnation of one of the NFL’s great teams?
With regard to these questions, training camp becomes serious business. These days a professional football team is a streamlined, profit-oriented capitalist entity whose success in the marketplace depends on, among other things, the appearance that it will be competitive in the league. When you consider the precision and complexity required in running just one play in football, six weeks seems a devastatingly short period of time to prepare. Plays must be drilled, players are evaluated and either retained or cast off, muscles are conditioned, minds must be focused. And a rueful seriousness pervades this atmosphere which is unabashedly darwinistic. Indeed, the primal element of men fighting each other for survival in the severely limited environment of the team’s final roster often boils down to a mano a mano struggle where an older member of the species must fend off the cunning advances of a younger newcomer. Such a spartan atmosphere is necessary to foster an acuity and determination that will endure all 16 games of the season.
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