Boys Will Be Boys (22 page)

Smith talked up his basketball talents—then played with the Hoopsters and stunk up the court. He bragged of his ability to drive a golf ball, and played 18 holes with Craig Neal, a former NBA journeyman who worked for Howell. “I probably shouldn’t say this,” Neal told Howell, “but Emmitt lost so many balls in the woods that I had to start chasing them. I wound up getting a poison ivy shot.”

Coming on the heels of a banner season, Smith licked his chops over the expiration of his three-year contract. Though he was a restricted free agent, meaning Dallas could match any other offer, Smith believed he was the engine that powered the machine. While Aikman was a superb quarterback and Irvin, Harper, and Novacek were dangerous receivers, the Cowboys were nothing without No. 22 lined up in the backfield. Just about the only player Smith deemed equal to his
status was Detroit’s Barry Sanders, regarded by most as the NFL’s best running back. Smith both admired and envied the Lion, whose shiftiness and stop-on-a-dime control he desired and whose status he craved. So smitten with Sanders was Smith that, midway through the ’92 season, Jerry Jones called his running back into the team’s executive offices. “Emmitt,” Jones said, “there are probably two people alive who consider you on a par with Barry Sanders, and they’re both in this room.” Jones proceeded to reach into a drawer and pull out a stack of papers. “My partners aren’t going to like this,” he said, “but I’m going to give you Barry Sanders’s contract, and I’ll give it to you as is.”

Smith was floored.

“We don’t need disharmony,” Jones said, licking his proverbial chops. “We don’t need to get agents involved. By giving you this contract, the Dallas Cowboys are saying to the world that Emmitt Smith is every bit the running back Barry Sanders is.”

Smith interrupted. “Jerry,” he said, “I appreciate it. But I really have to speak with my agent first.”

With that, Jones nodded and smiled. But his heart sank. Sanders’s contract—a five-year deal for $5.9 million—was widely regarded as one of the league’s worst. When Howell informed his client of this, Smith fumed. Screw Jerry Jones and screw the Dallas Cowboys. If they wanted to play that way, he would play that way too.

On March 27, 1993, Ed Werder of the
Dallas Morning News
reported that Smith and Howell had scheduled a meeting with the Miami Dolphins. “You can never close the door on a player that good, so we’re pursuing him to an extent,” said Tom Heckert, the Dolphins’ director of pro personnel. In his piece, Werder noted that it would take a contract of “at least” $3 million per season (or about $2.5 million more than Smith made in ’92) to avoid having Dallas match. Miami was interested, said Heckert, “[but] we definitely want to make sure this isn’t a ploy [to force the Cowboys’ hand].”

Four days later—convinced that it was, in fact, a ploy—Miami coach Don Shula canceled the meeting. Smith was unbowed. He and Howell contacted every other team in the league, dangling before them
the chance to sign a twenty-three-year-old workhorse entering his prime. Nobody bit. “We’d offer Emmitt four million a year,” one general manager told Howell, “but what’s the point? We know Jerry will match.” On May 14, Jones made what he termed “the final take-it-or-leave-it offer”—a laughable incentive-and-signing bonus-free four-year deal with annual salaries of $2 million, $2.2 million, $2.2 million, and $2.5 million. “That’s all you’ll get,” Jones told Howell. “Not a penny more.” The difference between the offer and what Smith desired ($17 million over four years) was staggering. When Smith declined, Jones went on the offense, slamming Howell to the media as a sleazy, greed-obsessed agent out to take advantage of a client. It was classic hypocrisy. Did Jones really want to get in a battle over greed? The Cowboys—a franchise valued at $165 million—had already announced a 23 percent increase in ticket prices for the upcoming season. Just a few weeks later, Jones arranged a beneath-the-table merchandising deal that would have netted him 20 percent of every Apex One–produced Cowboy garment sold by JCPenney. The agreement went squarely against the NFL’s collective bargaining agreement—greed personified, in the view of rival owners.

Come the start of training camp on July 15, Smith was home with his family in Pensacola, 687 miles from Austin. Though Johnson was consumed with an array of nagging issues—ranging from the herniated disk that would keep Aikman sidelined for six to eight weeks (he suffered the injury lifting weights during the offseason) to reserve tight end Alfredo Roberts’s broken foot to a handful of rookie holdouts—it was Smith’s absence that caused him the most distress. While Jones was assuring the press that Smith would be back with the Cowboys by opening day, Johnson wasn’t so sure. Throughout his dual careers in oil and football, Jones maintained the belief that he could overcome all obstacles. No gusher? Let’s drill to the east. No Emmitt? Someone else can run the ball.

In the Cowboys’ case, that
someone
turned out to be a 5-foot-10-inch, 194-pound rookie from the University of Alabama whose claim to fame was a celebratory dance. In a game against Florida as a senior,
Derrick Lassic crossed the goal line, placed his hand over his heart, and fell to the ground, feigning a heart attack. It was an ode to Redd Foxx’s character in
Sanford and Son,
and—like the old sitcom—it was a huge hit.

As the Cowboys’ fourth-round pick, Lassic had few expectations thrust upon him. Yet as the preseason progressed and neither side budged in the Jones-Smith stare-down, Lassic emerged as the front-runner to start the September 6 Monday-night opener at Washington.

Wrote Ed Werder in the August 20 edition of the
Morning News:

Much of Lassic’s preseason was spent as Johnson’s bull’s-eye, and he came to strongly resent the coach. “I never liked how he treated players,” says Lassic. “The way he played favorites was horrible. Maybe I’m saying that because I wasn’t one of his favorites. Clearly I wasn’t.” Lassic ran for 34 yards on 10 carries in his exhibition debut against the Vikings on August 1, then gained 35 yards on 16 attempts versus the Lions in the London-based “American Bowl” a week later. He lost fourteen pounds midway through the preseason while suffering from prolonged dehydration, and cautiously tiptoed through the same type of holes he burst through as a member of the Crimson Tide.

On August 10 Smith reenrolled at the University of Florida, and on September 4, two days before the opener, the
Morning News
re
ported that Howell called Jones to demand a trade to a franchise that would hand his client $4 million annually.

“Totally out of the question,” Jones told the newspaper.

As a boy growing up in Haverstraw, New York, Derrick Lassic never felt especially nervous before the start of sporting events. Really, why would he have? From the time he first played Pop Warner at age eight, Lassic was the fastest…the strongest…the best. He was a three-sport star at North Rockland High School who ran for school records of 1,787 yards and 31 touchdowns as a senior.

At Alabama, Lassic was on the fast track to a noteworthy collegiate career when, on March 25, 1990, a young man with everything in front of him came face-to-face with mortality. He was watching the NCAA basketball tournament in his dorm room when the telephone rang. It was a nearby hospital, informing Lassic that his girlfriend, Cherlintha Miles, had been involved in a serious car accident while driving from Montgomery to Tuscaloosa for a visit. “I was thinking something happened to the car,” said Lassic, “and that she needed a ride home.”

Tragically, the news was much worse. Miles, twenty, had died in a one-vehicle accident. For the next week Lassic refused to leave his room. He lost twenty pounds and his will to continue playing sports. Lassic packed his bags and prepared to head back to New York—only to be talked out of it by his father, Preston. “I had never lost anyone close to me,” said Lassic, “and I was ready to give up everything.”

Instead, Lassic remained in Dixie, found his way out of the darkness, and, as a senior, ranked fifth in the SEC with 905 rushing yards. He officially anointed himself a Crimson Tide legend by running for 135 yards and 2 touchdowns in Alabama’s 1993 Sugar Bowl upset of Miami, thus clinching the school’s first national title in fourteen years. When the Cowboys selected him in the draft, it was an ode to talent and resiliency. “I was thrilled,” Lassic says. “I’d won a national championship and now the defending Super Bowl champs wanted me. Plus,
I was well aware that I wasn’t ready to start in the NFL. They had Emmitt Smith for me to learn from. Perfect situation.”

So here were the Cowboys, reigning titleholders, waiting to open their season in the dank, smelly, cramped visitors’ locker room of RFK Stadium, and here were two contrasting sounds. On a television blaring from a side office, a tape was playing of Smith’s Sunday interview with
The NFL Today
, in which he claimed he might be done playing football. “I got plenty of money saved away,” he said, “so I think I can live continually, live healthy, and continue to live happy.” Meanwhile, in a neighboring bathroom, the team’s new starting running back was violently upchucking into a toilet. The fierce, throaty echo bouncing off the porcelain filled the room and overtook Smith’s voice. Had it been Aikman or Irvin or—
pretty please
—Smith experiencing pregame nausea, Cowboy players would have laughed the moment away. Nobody was laughing now.

Of all teams, the Redskins were not going to use a nationally televised
Monday Night Football
encounter to look sympathetically upon the Emmitt-less Cowboys. Not after Dallas took the ’92 NFC East crown. Not after Irvin had threatened to snap Darrell Green’s broken arm. Not after a rivalry that dated back thirty-three years. Certainly not after the
Washington Times
set up a Cowboys “hateline” the week of the game, inviting Redskin backers to offer their reasons for despising Dallas. A whopping 270 messages later, the point was clear. From “Johnson’s Liberace-styled hair” to “my ex-wife is a Cowboys fan” to “Emmitt Smith spit on me when I asked for an autograph,” apparently nobody in Washington could stand the arrogant Super Bowl champs.

Before a hostile crowd of 56,345, the Cowboys were flattened, 35–16. Dallas fumbled the ball three times in the first half, dropped two interceptions, and botched an extra point. Redskins defenders took special delight in taunting the lippy Irvin, who no longer seemed so tough (or loquacious) without the threat of a handoff to Smith.

The snap judgment was that Dallas without Smith was only a so-so operation. Yet the truth ran deeper. The real issue here was shattered team morale. As Smith stayed away, Jones spoke openly—and, it
seemed, eagerly—about renegotiating Aikman’s contract, which still had two years remaining. Led by Haley, a number of the African-American Cowboys wondered aloud why a black man like Smith had to beg for the money he deserved while the white, sandy-haired quarterback could have riches thrown at his feet. As far as Haley was concerned, it was business as usual in the NFL, a league without an owner or general manager of color and only two black starting quarterbacks (Houston’s Warren Moon and Detroit’s Rodney Peete). “We were saying, ‘Wow, you’re not gonna take care of Emmitt!’” says Larry Brown. “This guy works hard, he’s at practice, he’s in the weight room. Our whole thing was that if Mr. Jones didn’t care about Emmitt, he wasn’t gonna care about any of us. The frustration among us wasn’t just the money—it was lack of respect for a guy who played all out, who worked his ass off, who never complained.”

Though he was but an innocent bystander, Lassic paid dearly. In his first game as a pro, Lassic actually played well, gaining 75 yards on 16 carries against one of the league’s better defenses. He blocked adequately for Aikman, ran precise routes, and did as he was told. But the Cowboys’ offensive line—big, tough, tops in the NFL—blocked with neither the intensity nor the efficiency of past years. “I asked Erik Williams, ‘E, what the hell is going on here? Why aren’t y’all blocking for this kid?’” says James Washington. “He said, ‘Well, he runs too fast. We have a flow and he isn’t able to see it.’ It was totally unfair to Lassic.”

The mounting friction especially irked Johnson, who was painfully aware the team’s punch bowl had been poisoned. With increased urgency Johnson urged Jones to reach an accord with Smith. So what if the NFL would be incorporating a $31 million salary cap beginning in 1994? “The problem was that I fell into the same trap I was trying to get players to avoid,” Johnson said later. “I was paying [too much] attention to Emmitt not being there and knowing that we weren’t going to be as good a football team without him. I lost focus. We were working, but we weren’t focusing in on what we needed to be doing.”

The bottom fell out in Week 2, when the Buffalo Bills came to Texas Stadium and recorded a 13–10 win before a visibly agitated
crowd. Elliott missed two field goals and, two days later, lost his job. Lassic fumbled twice while gaining a mere 52 yards on 19 carries.

Though Cowboy fans had come to embrace Jones in the post-Landry years, no one seemed to agree with his stance regarding Smith. In a stadium accustomed to adoring signs like I LOVE TROY and EMMITT FOR PRESIDENT, the fans were now expressing their furor.

JERRY JONES: TRADE YOUR EGO, SIGN EMMITT

JONES, DO THE RIGHT THING, NOT THE WHITE THING SIGN EMMITT

WHAT IS THE DIFFERENCE IN ARKANSAS CLASS AND FIRST CLASS—EMMITT

Immediately after the game Haley stormed into the locker room, tears streaming down his cheeks. He fumed aloud, “We’re never gonna win with this fucking rookie!” When Jones entered, Haley picked up his helmet by the face mask and whizzed it ten feet through the air, past the owner, and through a wall.
THUD!
“You need to sign that motherfucker now!” he screamed. The silence was deafening. “I thought that thing was gonna kill me,” says Jones. “Nobody was happy, and I understood why.”