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Yes, I realize this book was released 100 years ago, but you are a sucker of you're paying premium on books. This shit is in bargain counters after two years. Save your money and read it three years after. The content doesn't change. The minute I heard that Jeff Pearlman was writing a book on the 1990s Dallas Cowboys, my ears immediately perked up. For one, Pearlman is an accomplished journalist and writer, having already tackled the 1986 New York Mets.
Two, if you want to get my football weenie going amid a lockout, tell me about the 1990s Dallas Cowboys.
The mention of the lockout is significant. With the threat of labor turmoil in the NFL and NBA and just years after the NHL and MLB cancelled entire seasons due to similar issues, there has been talk of when fans' ideals of sports are broken.
Often, it is when a team changes cities, a player is traded or, perhaps, when players/teams fall into disreputable circumstances like drugs, crime, steroids or cheating. For young boys of 1908, it might have been the Black Sox or possibly the steroid era of baseball. When is the innocence lost?
My sports cherry burst in 1994 when Jimmy Johnson quit (or was pushed out or fired) as head coach of the Dallas Cowboys. If you read this blog, you know I hate the Cowboys. In 1994, that was not the case.
I was between the ages of nine and 14 during the timeline of Boys will be Boys, Pearlman's inside look at the dynasty of the Dallas Cowboys of the 1990s. I'd liked football for several years and naturally, living in north Texas, my favorite team became the Cowboys. And they stunk. I didn't care. My baseball team (the Texas Rangers) stunk too. Winning didn't mean anything. Existing meant everything.
By the time Jerry Jones bought the Dallas Cowboys, winning became everything. By the time he'd pushed Johnson out, I realized that winning really didn't mean anything. Neither did making money, really. It was about Jones: The man, the myth, the legend.
In 2011, we see this for what it is. It is clear that Jones is obsessed with his image and his legacy as an owner. If we really knew then what we know now, maybe we react differently and maybe we bail out on the Cowboys sooner.
I bailed out in 1994. Shortly after winning a motherfucking Super Bowl, Jimmy and Jerry decide they can't work together. As I remember, Jimmy was essentially pushed out. It helped winning another Super Bowl two seasons later, but the decade of malaise and empty promises have rubbed people raw. What we know now (that we didn't know in 1994 or 1989) was that Jones was the great unmovable object.
That is what propels Boys will be Boys. It's not so much as the dream fulfilled (the three Super Bowl wins) as much as its about all the disappointment, celebrity, drugs, women, ego and opportunities lost.
Looking back, as much as the 1990s Cowboys were a dynasty, they were moreso a flash in the pan, a brief -- yet powerful -- force that dominating professional football for four years and simply fell off. Injuries mounted, personnel slipped badly, folks got older and the league never got any easier or more forgiving. Boys will be Boys is not a testament to what we had in Dallas, but what we lost.
Things I didn't know that I know now:
1. Being a kid at the time, the crime, women, drugs, car wrecks and buffoonery did not interest me and I was probably more than likely unable to understand it anyway. Re-reading about all that junk is fascinating and to have it placed in timeline with the seasons and team-oriented circumstances helps to all of the pieces of the puzzle together.
2. I knew that Michael Irvin was far more important to the team than what his stats showed. It is interesting to realize that today's Cowboys fight and claw to find four good receivers; however, in the 1990s, you had Irvin and that's it. Nothing against Alvin Harper, but he wasn't around for very long and his actual impact was minimal. The threat made more of an impact. Past Harper, it was a hodgepodge of fleeting names and personalities that you probably never got to know. Irvin's impact was real and it was overwhelming. He was the king of the castle. Everything went through him. I don't think there's a book thick enough to attempt to explain what he meant for those teams.
3. I didn't realize how big of a dick Jimmy Johnson was. That guy was hardcore. Ditching his wife because he simply had no time for her and didn't want to feel bad (or for her to feel jilted) when he wasn't around. Then the way he treated guys. I knew he was a hardass ... just didn't know how far it went.
4. Didn't know that Jones was such a philanderer. Thus, I can't understand why this isn't a story. Jones has been in a well-known marriage with Gene for years and years and he works with his three children with the Cowboys. Pearlman writes about Jones' frequent trysts with girls throughout the 1990s and not one word is said about it? How was this not a huge story when the book was released? How do his kids work with him? Why did no one blink at this tidbit?
5. I was not aware how much Troy Aikman hated Barry Switzer, nor did I realize how nonplussed Switzer was about coaching America's Team.
6. Unaware just how much Dallas-Fort Worth journalists partied with the 1990s Cowboys and didn't say a word about it. I get keeping things off the record and developing relationships. However, doing what the 1990s Cowboys were doing off the field and keeping all under wraps seemed completely unresponsible. It wasn't just partying: These were escapades probably rarely -- if ever -- rivaled in professional sports.
I'll say this: If this were Terrell Owens, Pacman Jones or Roy "Receiver" Williams doing all of this, it'd be plastered over the front page of the newspaper.
7. In addition to crime and sex, another aspect sports I had no time for was the Emmitt Smith holdout in 1993. He'd led the league in rushing and wanted a new deal for more money. The team thought he deserved it. Jerry Jones didn't. Unfortunately, the latter is the man that holds the purse strings. The holdout ended, as we know, after the Cowboys started 0-2 and Charles Haley smashed his helmet into a wall adjacent to Jones, who was in the lockerroom. Smith would get his money. However, compared to what Troy Aikman would get easily in an extension, it was still a slap in the face. The result was a deep mistrust of Jones and the understandable thought that he was racist, passively or not.
If you are a fan of the Dallas Cowboys, media or football in general, this is a really quick read. The writing is rich and the reporting and research unmistakably Jeff Pearlman. It tells a story. Much of it is tragic, but don't we all like a train wreck?
And you learn how much of a dick Jerry Jones is.
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