UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
Thursday, August 22, 1996
118
Cowboys'reign ends; Green Bay could pack Super Bowl victory
By Dave Goldberg Associated Press football writer
A lot of strange things have happened to the NFL since the Dallas Cowboys beat the Pittsburgh Steelers to win their third Super Bowl in four years.
The Cleveland Browns are the Baltimore Ravens. The Houston Oilers are on the way to Tennessee, showcasing young stars like Steve McNair and Eddie George before 40,000 empty seats in the Astrodome during a lame-duck season.
Between Sept. 1 and Oct. 13, Michael Irvin will be picking up roadside trash and serving meals in AIDS hospices, not catching footballs.
Brett Favre, the NFL's MVP, is two months out of drug rehabilitation.
For the first time in 27 years, Don Shula no longer coaches the Miami Dolphins. Jimmy Johnson does.
Oh yes, the Cowboys won't become the first team ever to win four Super Bowls in five years and six overall. Take it to the bank. Take it to Vegas. Take it to the Oneida Casino near Green Bay International Airport.
For the Vince Lombardi trophy could very well go back to Green Bay, to the team that Lombardi coached to wins in the first two Super Bowls, the Packers. If not, look to the Buffalo Bills, who could make their fifth appearance in seven seasons in the NFL title game. And maybe win it this time, say 27-24?
But that's in the future. Here's the now.
"We all have short memories," said commissioner Paul Tagliabue. "We've had stars in trouble before — remember Lawrence Taylor (suspended for four games in 1988 for violating the NFL drug policy)? The overwhelming majority of more than 1,500 players stay cut of trouble."
That's the kind of thing commissioners are paid seven figure salaries to say. It's also true.
But it doesn't lessen the impact when one of the biggest stars on the highest profile team
in football — if not all of sports — is arrested in a hotel room with a quantity of cocaine and two women who describe themselves as self-employed models. That's what happened to Irvin March 4 in Irving, Texas, not far from the Cow boys' training complex.
The upshot: a plea bargain to cocaine possession, a sentence of 800 hours of community service and a five-game suspension by the NFL, which will keep the game's second-best wide receiver off the field until Oct. 13.
The other upshot: a lot of hemming and hawing about partying by sundry Cowboys off the field and just a touch
of paranoia from Dallas.
"I'm not saying we're being singled out," said Jerry Jones, in the second year of his marketing battle with the NFL hierarchy. "But this is a result of our prominence."
In Irvin's place at wide receiver — and this is a sidelight that could turn into a sideshow — will be Deion Sanders, switching from cornerback to pass-catcher. That kind of switch would be akin to moving from centerfield to catcher in Sanders' former career.
Irvin's woes emphasize the problems of the Cowboys, who have paid so much to their major stars that they have little room below the salary cap for role players. Smith enters the season with a sprained left knee, the same injury that's sidelined left tackle Mark Tuinei, and Sanders' switch to offense leaves the secondary thin.
There are no such problems in Green
pay, where rave will be playing after he voluntarily entered the Meninger Clinic for an addiction to the painkiller Vicodin.
Volunteering makes him free from NFL sanction, and there's little reason to think he won't continue the pace of the last two
Talk about strange.
seasons — 72 touchdown passes and just 27 interceptions.
Here was Don Shula in the press box at Giants Stadium for a Jets-Giants exhibition, plugging the satellite TV package that allows fans to get all of a week's games at the same time. After 33 seasons and 347 wins as a head coach, 26 of the seasons and 274 of the wins of them in Miami, he is now a "consultant" to the Dolphins.
One name Shula does not utter often is "Johnson," who between trips to the Fox Television studio last year sat on his boat in Biscayne Bay listening to South Florida fans clamor for him to replace Shula.
"When you get down to it," said Johnson, who coached the Cowboys to Super Bowl wins in 1992 and 1993. "I don't think I would have gone anywhere but here."
His team probably isn't going anywhere. Not this year. Although Johnson said his window of opportunity in Miami was three years—the length of Dan Marino's contract—he's spending the first year a bit like he did in Dallas, where he finished 1-15.
But Johnson's old team has its problems, too.
But Johnson's team has its problems. The free agent attrition continued in the offseason and into training camp, thanks largely to the salary cap. A total of 22 free agents have left since an incredibly deep Dallas team beat Buffalo 52-17 after the 1992 season for the first title in its run.
"We have stars, but most teams have a lot more depth," says coach Barry Switzer.
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