Game Over 
God Bless America's Team
What the Dallas Cowboys need right now, even more than tirades from Bill Parcells, is help from above. At least we know Tex Schramm will put in a good word.
(Page 2 of 3)
Parcells' tyrannical reputation preceded him in Dallas—as he had intended. Before many of the current Cowboys met their new coach, a memorandum appeared on the locker room bulletin board. In the style of a manifesto that a military commandant might post on the city hall door of a village he has conquered, it laid out rules and regulations. Players' cars not parked properly would be towed. Cell phones would be turned off before entering the locker room. No food in the locker room, training room, or weight room. The memo said nothing about dominoes or boom boxes, but everyone got the message. In short order, the Cowboys locker room was as neat, quiet, and orderly as a monk's cell.
Then signs began to appear throughout the team's Valley Ranch training facilities, plainly stating Parcells-isms: "Be on time. Pay attention. Practice and play hard." "Think turnover!" "Three fights every day: (A) Division from within. (B) Your competition. (C) Public perception." "A few poor character guys ruin even the best of teams."
Parcells personally supervised the team's off-season weight-and-conditioning program, something that even the meticulous Jimmy Johnson didn't always do. He gave each player a maximum weight for training camp; two offensive linemen needed to lose thirty pounds. Players who reported to camp overweight would be fined the league maximum, which last year was $235 per pound, per day. Two All-Pros, Larry Allen and La'Roi Glover, committed to a conditioning plan that would get them in the best shape of their careers. Antonio Bryant, a talented receiver who stood out last year mostly for his big mouth and bad attitude, was suddenly following Parcells like a puppy panting for approval. "If there's going to be a fat guy on this team," Parcells said, "it's going to be me."
Before the start of minicamps, Parcells signed several free agents that had played for him on other teams—fullback Richie Anderson, receiver Terry Glenn, and tackle Ryan Young. They are what he calls "hold the fort" players, guys who can fill holes immediately while imparting the party line. Anderson, a former Jet, quickly became the Cowboys' new vocal leader. "It's important for me to have guys like that—smart, dedicated, productive football players who know what their job is," Parcells told the Morning News. Young warned the Cowboys that once training camp started, they should expect the worst. "While some coaches might let up after a while," he said, "Coach Parcells just keeps coming at you and pounding you until it's done his way."
Unpredictability is one of Parcells' strong suits. He has been known to walk off a practice field three days before a game, which is his way of telling his team, "Okay, you don't want to do it my way. You girls coach yourselves." As he explained in The Final Season, some days he's hearts and roses; other days he drips acid. Some weeks he tells his coaches to ease off. Some weeks he tells them, "No buddy-buddy, no chitchat with the players. Be all business. Be good teachers, but don't be cordial. Don't be friendly. I don't want friendly."
The Cowboys quickly learned that Parcells was as tough as his reputation. Mental lapses, physical shortcomings, and stupidity resulted in instant and terrible punishment. If a player failed to know what play had been called—even if the player wasn't in the huddle—the entire unit, offense or defense, was forced to run 150 yards across a practice field and up an incline. Parcells believes in the therapeutic value of "gassers": four wind sprints across the field and back in no more than 38 seconds. Gassers are often followed by a few "up and downs": running in place, knees high, then belly-flopping to the ground. In the days before players lifted weights, legendary coach Vince Lombardi used "up and downs" to develop players' arms and chest muscles. Parcells uses them to develop character. Examples abound of how he also uses sarcasm and insults. "Any day now, ladies," he yells as they hustle from drill to drill. When Glenn was a rookie with New England and reporters asked the coach about his injury status, Parcells replied that "she" was doing as well as could be expected. If a player passes out from the intensity of a workout, he's liable to wake up to find he's been cut. A player who throws up from exhaustion might be warned, "Throw up on your own time."
"If you're sensitive," he has told generations of players, "you will have a hard time with me."
NEVERTHELESS, PARCELLS CAME TO DALLAS sensitive to the feelings of an owner who, at least since Jimmy Johnson left town, has made all the decisions. At the introductory press conference where Jones announced that Parcells had agreed to a $17 million four-year contract, Parcells let Jones do most of the talking. But it was clear that the two men had agreed to defer to each other. The clock is running: Parcells is 62, Jones is 60, and both know that this partnership is probably their last chance at a Super Bowl.
Parcells hunkered down, keeping a low profile and making himself scarce. He didn't want the media to get the notion that he was there to control and replace Jones. Asked if it bothered him when Jones issued pronouncements about personnel, Parcells replied, "I think we're going to be philosophically compatible with it. We've had many exchanges about things of that nature since I've been with the Cowboys. I think it will work out okay." Behind the scenes, Parcells assembled his staff (something no Cowboys coach had been allowed to do since Johnson), signed free agents of his choosing, and got ready for the draft. He was acutely aware that the operation of a modern pro football team is largely about perception. When he told the media that from then on the organization would speak with "one voice," he implied two-part harmony.
Draft day, in April, was the first public show of this new division of power. Bill advised and Jerry made the calls. After the Cowboys had completed their first- and second-round selections, Jones spoke with reporters while Parcells stayed behind in the war room. Jones compared the team's top pick, Kansas State cornerback Terence Newman, to Deion Sanders, maybe the best cornerback of all time. Late that night, after the teams had finished for the day, Parcells carefully contradicted his boss to an Associated Press reporter: "I think that would be a little premature to compare him to one of the better players that's played in the league. In fact, that would be very premature." Jones wanted to fly Newman to Dallas that night in his private jet, but Parcells vetoed the idea. "I don't want to separate the first-round draft choice," he said. "I don't care if he was drafted first or three-hundredth. He's part of the team now."
In Parcells' caste system, rookies are two levels below untouchables, regardless of how high they are drafted or how much they're paid. At the first minicamp, Newman was singled out as the player responsible for fetching cups of water for the head coach during breaks. Glenn, the seventh player taken in the 1996 draft, also got to fetch water for Parcells. "Coach Parcells doesn't want anyone thinking they are bigger than the team," he explained to the Morning News. Nor were rookies permitted to display the famous Cowboys star on their helmets during minicamps or training camp. "They're just numbers right now," Parcells said. "The stars have to be earned."
What went almost unnoticed was that in the days leading up to training camp, Jones redirected his energy to marketing, scouting, and masterminding negotiations for a new stadium, areas in which he excels. For the first time in his fourteen years as Cowboys boss, Jones began to resemble—dare I say it?—Tex Schramm. Only without the sense of humor.
TEX LOVED TRAINING CAMP. IT gave him time to think of bigger, better, newer, and flashier ways to market his product or gain a jump on the competition. In the summers between 1962 and 1967, I saw and talked to Tex daily but never imagined all the amazing stuff racing through his brain. He didn't look particularly busy, standing on the sidelines of a practice field in Forest Grove, Oregon, or Marquette, Michigan, or Thousand Oaks, California, or dealing with the flow of incoming and outgoing players. When the impish Murchison sent a ringer named Rufus "Roughhouse" Paige to Cowboys camp with a signed contract, Tex took it in stride. He put Roughhouse on an airplane and sent him to Murchison's private island in the Bahamas.
My Library
