Boys Will Be Boys (29 page)

The opportunity for a different life came to Barry Switzer in the form of a football scholarship from the University of Arkansas in Fayetteville, which he attended from 1956 to 1960 and where he excelled as an offensive lineman and linebacker. For Barry, college wasn’t about football so much as it was about personal development, confidence, and a sense of self. As a boy, Barry could not escape his father’s shadow, and often feared that he was doomed to follow his path. “[At college] I learned to express myself well in public,” he wrote in
Bootlegger’s Boy
. “I learned to be a leader and get along with people at the same time. My social experiences and maturing meant as much to me as my degree.”

But if there is a defining moment that explains Barry Switzer, it occurred on the night of August 26, 1959, when he was twenty-three years old. Lying in bed, an electric fan blowing the mosquitoes off his face, Barry was approached by his mother, who was loaded up with alcohol and prescription drugs. “Mother,” he said, “I would rather not ever see you again, and know you are safe and well taken care of, than to see you like this all the time.” Beaten down by a life short on love and high on abuse, Mary Louise bent to kiss her son’s cheek. He turned his head away. Barry was mad, frustrated, distraught—disgusted. Mary Louise rose from the bed, removed a pistol from the closet, walked to the back porch, and shot herself. Barry dashed down the hallway and found her lifeless body. He carried her into the house and placed her atop her bed. The sheriff soon arrived and confirmed what the son had known: Mary Louise Switzer was dead.

“I felt like I was the one who had caused her to pull the trigger,” Switzer wrote. “All she wanted was my love and I turned my face away. I have carried this guilt with me the rest of my life.”

Upon graduating from Arkansas in 1960, Switzer enlisted in the U.S. Army Reserves for six months before being asked by Razorbacks coach Frank Broyles whether he would return as an assistant.

Broyles was initially drawn to Switzer’s intelligence and work ethic, but what he uncovered was the best recruiter he’d ever seen. Borrowing the gift of schmooze his father used in peddling booze, Barry could walk into a home and immediately grasp the needs of the player and—more important—his mother. Barry was a fast talker, but not an offensively slick one. He was young enough to relate to high school seniors and wise enough to speak of educational needs. When Arkansas ran off twenty-two straight wins in 1964 and ’65, much credit went to the players Switzer had helped bring in. Two of the Razorbacks’ linemen were, in fact, Jerry Jones and Jimmy Johnson. “Nobody had anything but respect for Barry back then,” says Jones. “It was easy to see he had a future.”

When Jim Mackenzie was hired to coach Oklahoma in 1966, he tabbed Switzer as his offensive line coach. Upon Mackenzie’s death from a heart attack on April 28, 1967, Oklahoma named Chuck Fairbanks the new coach. Not only did Fairbanks retain Switzer—he promoted the twenty-nine-year-old to offensive coordinator and had him dump Oklahoma’s two-back offense and replace it with the wishbone. By season’s end the Sooners were college football’s No. 1–ranked team.

Fairbanks departed for the New England Patriots after the 1972 season, and the Oklahoma Board of Regents agreed to hand the job over to the thirty-five-year-old Switzer. He arrived in Norman as an obscure assistant hoping to maybe, just maybe, make a career out of this coaching thing. He left sixteen years later as one of the most legendary, polarizing figures in the ninety-four-year history of OU football. Though nobody accused Switzer of being an ineffective football coach, a state known for its church-per-block convictions finally tired of the man. In his 1988 autobiography,
The Boz,
former Sooners linebacker Brian Bosworth said Switzer “turns his back” on his players’ off-the-field transgressions. According to Bosworth, such behavior included extensive freebasing of cocaine and the acceptance of lavish gifts from team boosters. When Oklahoma’s 1949 national championship team said it would cancel its fortieth reunion if Switzer was retained, the university had no choice. Switzer resigned under pressure, damned to an eternity of seeing his name alongside the words “outlaw” and “scoundrel.”

Then Jerry Jones came calling.

The Cowboys owner had always possessed a soft spot for Switzer; for his vulnerabilities and pain as much as his compassion and football knowledge. Jones saw Switzer for who he was—the type of guy who would give a stranger the shirt off his back and wash, iron, and fold it, too. So what if Texans despised Oklahoma as college football’s anti-Christ? Jones believed they would learn to love Switzer the way he did. “So many people in this business have a big ego,” says Lacewell. “Well, Barry Switzer has about as little ego coaching as anybody I’ve
ever known. He wanted good players and he was willing to spread the credit around.”

Now Jones was giving the world’s most unlikely coaching reclamation project a second chance. He was betting a five-year, $5 million contract that it would work. “Jerry wanted somebody to be loyal to him,” says Switzer. “Someone who he would be comfortable with in his own house. He didn’t have that with Jimmy, what with all the undercurrents and the inability of his coach to share success. But Jimmy is an insecure person. I’m not.”

Switzer, Jones believed, would ably coach the Cowboys, and without Johnson’s attitude. So what if Switzer was inclined to make the occasional moronic statement about strippers or boosters or helping players out with a little bit of pocket change? So what if Switzer’s ethics lapsed from time to time? So what if Switzer would soon be diagnosed with ADD (hardly a shock to those familiar with his here-one-minute-gone-the-next mannerisms)? “The day after I signed Jerry insisted, ‘Tear up the contract. I’m going to redo it,’” says Switzer. “I said, ‘Why?’ Jerry said, ‘Because I got up this morning, I looked at myself in the mirror, and I liked myself.’”

Best of all, now Jones would serve as his own general manager. On March 31, 1994, the Cowboys released tight end Alfredo Roberts, a trusty reserve who had played for Johnson at the University of Miami. The next day Switzer was asked what he didn’t like about Roberts. “I’ll be honest with you,” he said. “I heard it on the radio a few minutes ago while I was out looking at some houses. I guess the general manager made a decision to release him and didn’t consult the coach. Hell, it’s OK with me.”

T
HE ASSUMPTION AROUND
Dallas was that Barry Switzer was doomed to walk into a buzz saw; that the players who had followed Jimmy Johnson to two straight Super Bowl titles were stubborn loyalists who would never give their hearts, minds, and bodies to this renegade from Oklahoma.

The assumption was wrong.

To kick off the first meeting with his new players, Switzer, standing at the front of a conference room at Valley Ranch on April 4, 1994, glanced from man to man and asked, “Dammit, where’s Charles Haley? Where the hell is Charles Haley?”

Haley, squatting in the back, stood and raised his hand.

“I’m mad at you!” Switzer yelled. “I heard you flicked your dick at everybody, and you didn’t do it to me! What am I, chopped liver?”

The room broke out in laughter. This was no Jimmy Johnson.

Oh, there were ominous signs of rebellion here and there. When he learned of Switzer’s hiring, Michael Irvin, Johnson’s most vocal
supporter, said he could not play for the new coach and threw a garbage can toward television reporters. Then, at the conclusion of the initial twenty-minute meeting, Irvin stormed out with smoke billowing from his ears. What enraged Irvin was not Switzer, the man, but the words emerging from his lips. “I’ve known Jerry Jones for a long time,” Switzer told his new players, “and I think we all owe him for what he’s built here. Without Jerry, the Cowboys—”

“Fuck that!” screamed Irvin. “Barry, do you have any idea how many players he’s fucked over money? Do you?”

Switzer was unbowed. “Mike, lemme finish,” he said. “Just gimme a chance to…”

Irvin left.

“I wasn’t mad at Barry,” Irvin says. “I was just disappointed at losing a man I had come to love.”

Switzer could have handled the uncomfortable incident in any number of ways. Wisely, he stepped back and did nothing. “Michael doesn’t know me, but I know Michael,” Switzer told reporters the next day. “I know what a great leader he is on the field, I know how he practices. I respect his fierce loyalty to [Jimmy Johnson].”

The words resonated with Dallas players, many of whom had spent three or four years under Johnson’s 10,000-pound thumb. Though few thought Switzer would match Johnson as a pure football coach, he arrived in Dallas with a much-needed air of casualness. “Jimmy kept that pressure on everyone all the time, and it could beat a person down,” says Jay Novacek. “The way he ran practices, the way he hammered guys—there’s no way we could have survived much longer. Barry’s style was important. He changed the pace when the pace needed to be adjusted.”

By the aftermath of Super Bowl XXVIII, most Cowboys had had it with the hypocrisy of Jimmy Johnson. Throughout his final two seasons, Johnson preached the concept of one-for-all-all-for-one. “Ego and selfishness have no place here,” he said repeatedly. “No place at all.” Yet when push came to shove, why had Johnson departed? Because he was unwilling to share credit with Jerry Jones. Because of ego.

“That was the biggest disappointment with Jimmy—ego took precedence over everything,” says Mark Stepnoski, the Cowboys’ veteran center. “The thing I didn’t understand was that Jimmy used to talk repeatedly about how if we all have success, there’ll be enough credit to go around to everybody. Which is true. And sure enough, we got better every year and the more games we won the more attention guys got, the more guys made the Pro Bowl, the more money guys made, the more coaching awards Jimmy received. Then—BAM!—Jimmy and Jerry split up. I can’t really fathom what it would take to make a guy walk away from a situation that good. But he did.”

While there would always be the sense that he was Jones’s bobo, Switzer won over his new minions not by establishing himself as the anti-Jimmy, but by being smart enough to leave things alone and stay out of the way. With the exception of Norv Turner—who departed to coach the Washington Redskins and was replaced as offensive coordinator by Ernie Zampese—Switzer kept the on-field staff intact, and even stuck with Johnson’s old playbook. Though he failed to garner the support of Butch Davis, the arrogant defensive coordinator, this was hardly Switzer’s failure—Davis had campaigned for the head coaching job and was outraged when he was overlooked. (As Davis would later prove in his four disastrous years guiding the Cleveland Browns, it was a solid no-hire.) Most of the other assistants found Switzer refreshingly easy to work for. In his first meeting with his new staff, Switzer laid out his manifesto. “I’m gonna let you coach,” he said. “You do your job, I’ll do mine. But if I find any one of you motherfuckers being disloyal I’ll fire you on the spot.” To Davis, this amounted to a threat. To his coworkers, it was heaven. In a league overstuffed with egomaniacal sideline blowhards, Switzer merely desired professionalism. “There was talk in the media that the coaches were against Barry, and it was complete garbage,” says Dave Campo, the defensive backs coach. “He made it clear early on that he saw himself more as an overseer than a hands-on guy, and that was very wise. He put a lot of trust in us. Personally, I loved Barry.”

If Switzer faced a grueling uphill battle, it was with a press corps
sprinkled with lazy homers willing to take one or two misguided sources at their word. At its best, the Dallas media market offered writers like Rick Gosselin, Frank Luksa, Ed Werder, Randy Galloway, and Denne Freeman—true professionals who accurately depicted the goings-on with America’s Team. At its worst, though, fans were subjected to so-called radio and television “journalists” who viewed the job as a chance to make friends with the players and gain a level of fame themselves.

Most egregious was the approach taken by Dale Hansen, the longtime Cowboy radio analyst. As far as professional football broadcasters went, Hansen was one of the nation’s elite. On KVIL-FM he played well off of partner Brad Sham and knew the game with unquestioned insight. The problem, though, was that at the same time Hansen doubled as a journalist (he was a sportscaster for Channel 8), he maintained questionable personal relationships with the men he covered. For example, Hansen was thrilled to be included in player-only poker nights, during which illegal drug usage took place. “One time I remember three of the guys lighting up a joint,” says Hansen. “They looked at me and said, ‘You’re not gonna report this, are you?’” Of course he wouldn’t report it—hell, he wanted to be invited back. “But then I looked one of the guys in the eye and said, ‘But if you fuck up Sunday, I might have to blow on you.’ My theory was ‘Guys, this is not my job. But if you don’t play well and I know you were drunker than hell and left with a hooker Saturday night, I’m going to report that.’”

The approach was inane—especially when it came to Troy Aikman, the object of Hansen’s puppy love. The crush dated back to the final days of 1988, when Aikman and UCLA were preparing to battle Arkansas in the Cotton Bowl. In a radio interview held at a Tony Roma’s in Dallas, Hansen caught the senior quarterback’s attention with quirky questions like, “How long until you replace Steve Pelluer?”

“Troy laughed all the way through the interview,” says Hansen. “Then he came to training camp and he and I became great friends. We started to hang out a lot, doing things together.” Though it did not strike Hansen as odd that he was a forty-year-old journalist befriending
a kid half his age, others in the media found the bias laughably transparent. Aikman could play like Steve Pisarkiewicz on ice skates and Hansen would refuse to rip him.

When Switzer was first hired, Hansen sought input from the golden boy, who had spent parts of two seasons as a quarterback at Oklahoma. “You’re gonna love this guy,” Aikman raved. “He’s smart, he’s funny, and he understands the press.”

Yet by the early days of training camp, Aikman was reminded why, while he liked Switzer at Oklahoma, he didn’t especially respect him. During practices the new head coach would walk around the fields, whistle dangling from a shoelace around his neck, a vacant look in his eyes. When he spoke, it wasn’t with the authority of a Jimmy Johnson, but the distant casualness of an onlooker who wasn’t quite sure whether his team played in the NFC or AFC. Famously, there was an on-field incident with trainer Kevin O’Neill, a prideful man who didn’t take kindly to unneeded interferences. Once, as Switzer tried to offer advice before a gaggle of players, O’Neill turned and screamed, “Don’t tell me how to do my fucking job!” The coach slinked away.

Part of Switzer’s trepidation was due to newness; one doesn’t make the jump from five years of autograph show appearances to running the Dallas Cowboys without stumbling. But there was something more—Switzer’s apparent need to be one of the guys; to establish himself as a chum, not an overlord. As a collegiate player Switzer never encountered a curfew he didn’t break, and that modus operandi reigned as his players hit Austin’s 6th Street bars until the wee morning hours without consequences. “Curfews,” he once said, “are rat-turd things made to be broken.” Once, after several players arrived in the morning with reddened eyes and reeking from the scent of Jack Daniel’s, Switzer sauntered toward the 50-yard line and yelled, “If any of you sons of bitches ain’t in the pool in the next ten minutes, you’re gonna have to practice today!” Ninety-nine percent of the Cowboys cheered with delight. Aikman did not. To the regimented quarterback, Switzer’s casual approach seemed ineffective and his practices disorganized.
“Switzer was prone to saying erratic stuff in meetings that would drive Aikman insane,” says Michael Silver, the former
Sports Illustrated
football writer. “He would give a speech to the team and he’d start talking about ‘my daddy’s black mistress.’ It drove the real serious guys who won under Jimmy nuts.”

As Aikman soured on the head coach, so, too, did Hansen, his broadcaster lackey. He heard the tales of Switzer’s lackadaisical ways, then turned to assistant coach Butch Davis, who—after watching Switzer aimlessly roam practices—was happy to slam his new boss. On the morning of the final Thursday of camp, Hansen was interviewed by KLIF’s Norm Hitzges. When Hitzges asked if there were any concerns for the season, Hansen said that Switzer was having trouble with his assistants, and that he needed to immediately work it out. The words emerged from Hansen’s mouth, but derived directly from Aikman and Davis. “I thought it was a very innocent comment,” says Hansen. “Innocent but true.”

That night, at exactly 10:34
P.M.,
Hansen and Switzer sat down for what initially seemed to be an ordinary on-air TV chat. Both men were dressed casually—Switzer in shorts and a blue golf shirt, Hansen in a red-and-blue golf shirt. With the Channel 8 camera rolling live, Hansen began with a run-of-the-mill question about training camp. Switzer responded, “I loved it. If I had orchestrated it any better it couldn’t have gone better. Because I didn’t orchestrate it. It just happened.”

Quickly, things turned nasty. Hansen asked Switzer about the team’s recent trip to Mexico City for an exhibition game against the Houston Oilers, which was plagued by travel issues that included a four-hour runway wait.

HANSEN:
“A lot of players are unhappy that you haven’t spoken out more saying that Jerry Jones was at fault for more of the problems we had down there. Aren’t you concerned that you run the risk of losing the respect of your players?” Game on.

SWITZER:
“I didn’t know [Jerry] was a Mexican official. That’s the next thing we’re gonna accuse him of. He had nothing to do with it. Nothing to do with it. I think—I know—that Jerry is a great guy, but I’ve gotta convince you and some other people…But it really doesn’t matter.”

HANSEN:
“You don’t have to convince me, but I think you have to convince some of your players.”

SWITZER:
“As long as he pays them, it doesn’t make a difference. I wanna ask you. You made a phone call on the Norm Hitzges show and you said that we had a controversy on our staff down here today and discord…”

HANSEN:
“A power struggle…”

SWITZER:
“A power struggle? On our staff?”

HANSEN:
“You’re saying that’s not true?”

SWITZER:
“What are you talking about?”

HANSEN:
“I’m talking about your assistants are all fighting…As some have said to me, you have like five head coaches.”

SWITZER:
“Dale, you know better than that. I’ve got the second-fastest gun on the team. You know why? Because Jerry’s got the one and I’ve got the other, and I can fire any player on this squad, other than the ones that got the great contracts and make all the money.”

HANSEN:
“Jimmy Johnson said 1984 was his worst year in coaching, and the worst mistake he made was taking over a football team with an inherited staff. Aren’t you making the same mistake?”

SWITZER:
“No, not at all. Those guys and I get along great. All you’ve gotta do is interview them. We get along fine. And Kevin O’Neill, when you said we had a screaming match…an altercation…”

HANSEN
(finger raised): “I said players told me that happened.”

SWITZER:
“Well, I don’t know what players you’re talking to, but it certainly didn’t happen. I asked Kevin—what are they talking about? I asked the coaches, I grabbed the reporters. You guys fabricate things. You can’t think. Read the
Dallas Observer
—where do you get that crap? Tell me about it. Where’s it come from?”

Until this point, there had remained a paper-thin layer of civility. Now it had vanished.
The Dallas Observer
, an alternative weekly newspaper, had recently run a piece on Hansen’s after-hour activities that proved terribly embarrassing to the broadcaster. Switzer knew there was a bruise, and he chose to slam it with a hammer.

HANSEN
(raising a finger and his voice): “I know where my sources come from. You don’t have to take a cheap shot at me.”

SWITZER
(smiling, grabbing Hansen’s hand): “Hey, I’ve had as much heat as you’ve had. We’re on the same team, we come from the same school. Lemme ask you something—”