Boys Will Be Boys (33 page)

Left unsaid was that Deion Sanders was a Nike spokesperson being wooed by a Nike team.

The 49ers were toast.

On the Thursday afternoon before he planned on officially signing Sanders, Jerry Jones summoned twelve Cowboy players into his Valley Ranch office. “I just wanna know what you guys think about this,” he said. “It’s my opinion that we can be a better team with Deion than we are without him. From everyone I speak with he’s a good locker room guy, he works hard—”

Jones was cut off by Dale Hellestrae, the veteran long snapper.

“Jerry,” he said, “if you can get Deion Sanders, you’ve gotta do it.”

The others in the room—Aikman, Irvin, and Emmitt Smith
among them—nodded. But the Cowboys were far from a united front. “All a lot of people saw was the whole Prime Time image,” says Scott Case, a Cowboys cornerback who had played with Sanders for five years in Atlanta. “But Deion and I used to fish all the time together, and he was wonderful. He used to fish with this cheap Cane Fishing Pole. I’d say, ‘Deion, you’re making two million and you fish with a Cane!?’ He’d get a laugh out of that.” Yet those only aware of the bright lights and gaudy jewelry were concerned. The peacefulness of an NFL locker room depends on disparate personalities somehow living in harmony. “I was cautious of his prima donna attitude,” says Chad Hennings, the defensive lineman. “That can etch away at a team as quickly as any off-the-field problem.”

On Monday, September 11, a day after they improved to 2–0 with a 31–21 triumph over Denver, the franchise held a press conference at Texas Stadium to introduce Sanders and announce that the newest Cowboy had agreed to a seven-year, $35 million deal that would include a league-record $12,999,999.99 signing bonus (the Cowboys consider the number 13 unlucky). The relatively low base salary was a creative way of adding Sanders while staying $300,000 below the cap.

The twenty-eight-year-old four-time Pro Bowler stepped before the microphone wearing a snazzy navy blue pinstriped suit, black leather shoes, diamond earrings, and, to quote Ed Werder of the
Morning News,
“a rich cocktail ring the approximate size of a manhole cover.” Accompanied by his wife, Carolyn, their two children, and his mother, Sanders was equal parts charming, thoughtful, and arrogant. “I have an ego when I hit the field,” he said. “My ego is that I’m the best at my position to play that game. Off the field, my friends and my loved ones know who I really am. I don’t care about hype. I care about Super Bowl rings.

“There were other teams where—believe it or not—the financial situation could have been better. I truly wanted to be a Dallas Cowboy because of the players on this team. I definitely plan to have a three-, four-, or five-year run at Super Bowls.”

Naturally, Sanders refused to name the teams with whom the fi
nancial situation could have been better—because, ahem, they didn’t exist. The 49ers, Broncos, and Dolphins had offered significantly less money. Also missing was a definitive date for the beginning of his Cowboy career. Not only was Sanders committed to the San Francisco Giants, with whom he was under contract, but he was also suffering from chronic soreness in his left ankle. He intended to undergo arthroscopic surgery and join the Cowboys “at some point in November.”

Yet while Sanders was far removed from the football field, his signing called into question the direction of a franchise. When Jones and Jimmy Johnson had taken over operations six years earlier, the idea was to build through roster flexibility and youthful player development—turning one draft pick into three, three draft picks into eight. No Cowboy fan needed reminding that the two most recent Super Bowl triumphs could never have taken place had the franchise not sent Herschel Walker to Minnesota for a bushel of players and draft choices. Now, in an effort to reclaim the glory, weren’t the Cowboys taking the exact opposite approach? As of early September the team had only thirty-five players under contract for the 1996 season, at a cost of $39.9 million. With the salary cap expected to be set at $40 million by the NFL, the Cowboys were—for lack of a better word—screwed. “You’ve got to reward your Indians at some point, but in football you have to be careful how far you extend yourself,” says Kevin Smith, the veteran cornerback. “By the mid-nineties Jerry just gave out money. That’s great if you’re a player looking to get rich, but it doesn’t keep a team hungry. Jerry was right when he said anyone could have coached our team. But not just anyone could sustain it.”

Although most media outlets praised Jones for spending to win, some remained skeptical. In the
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette,
columnist Bob Smizik wrote that future historians would “pinpoint the precise beginning of the decline and fall of the Dallas Cowboys’ empire as a day early in the 1995 season when owner Jerry Jones became so overwhelmed with the need to stroke his enormous ego to highs not even he had
thought possible that he signed a part-time player who was facing surgery to a $35 million contract. The signing certainly garnered Jones all the attention he craved and unquestionably made him the undisputed high roller of the National Football League. But did Jones really get what he wanted?”

The league would have to wait to find out.

In the seven weeks that passed between Sanders’s signing and his on-field debut, the Dallas Cowboys played their best football of the Switzer Era, posting a 6–1 record to take an early lead in the NFC East. Away from the field, though, Switzer had his hands full trying to keep his club from falling apart. To start with, he needed Charles Haley to calm the heck down.

Now in his fourth season with Dallas, Haley had disappointed many teammates when, after announcing his retirement following the NFC Championship Game loss, he changed his mind and reported to training camp. In the beginning the Cowboys tolerated and, occasionally, laughed at his penis-waving, insult-slinging ways. But after prolonged exposure, the act had grown old. “Everything with Haley depended on whether he was on his medication or off of it,” says Switzer. “On it, he was great. Off it, he was crazy.” Kevin O’Neill, the Cowboys trainer, still laughs when he recalls the day in 1993 when the Dallas Mavericks brought their new marquee player, rookie forward Jamal Mashburn, to Valley Ranch for a tour. “Charles had never met the guy before,” says O’Neill. “Yet the first time he sees him, he spots the big gap between Jamal’s two front teeth and screams, ‘Hey, Jamal, you should spend some money and get your teeth fixed!’” One of Haley’s favorite bull’s-eyes used to be Chad Hennings, the Air Force pilot-turned-defensive lineman whose 6-foot-6, 291-pound frame belied a gentle, Bible-fearing man. “What dumb-ass let you fly a plane?” Haley would crack. “You have enough trouble tackling a fucking running back.” During training camp, Haley mocked Hennings incessantly
until—
SNAP!
“Charles,” warned Hennings, “if you say one more thing I’m gonna kick the shit out of you.”

The meeting room went quiet.

Had Chad Hennings just cursed?

“Hennings, you’re so fucking stupid,” Haley barked, pointing toward a tape of a recent practice. “Look how dumb you are out there doing—”

Hennings spun around, grabbed Haley’s neck, and rammed his head through the window. He cocked back his fist and prepared to fire when John Blake, an assistant coach, pulled him away. “I would have tried to kill him,” Hennings says. “I’ve always believed in turning the other cheek. But with Charles, you either took it forever, or you stood up to him. I completely embarrassed him, and it felt great. He never really messed with me again.”

With Hennings off the mock market, Haley looked for new victims. He initially took aim at Scott Case, the veteran cornerback who arrived in Dallas in 1995 after eleven seasons with the Falcons. During one meeting, Case was quietly paying attention to a coach’s speech when he heard Haley whisper from behind.

“Hey, Scott…”

Case ignored him.

“Scott, turn around. I gotta show you something.”

Case ignored him again.

“Scott, dammit, turn around. You need to see this!”

Case finally looked back, where he saw Haley’s erect penis stretched across the desk.

Haley was unpredictable and unbalanced. Linebacker Jim Schwantz still recalls the day Haley hosted a class of special-needs schoolchildren at Valley Ranch. Before the kids left, Haley insisted on signing autographed cards for each one. “Those are the Charles Haley stories you never hear,” says Schwantz. Because they were obscured by the bizarreness. Haley inevitably turned his radar toward Shante Carver, the flop first-round draft pick. Not a day would pass without Haley reminding
Carver that he was useless; dog shit; a punk-ass. “You are the biggest fucking bust I’ve ever seen,” Haley said repeatedly. “You have no business being here.”

“Charles was so brutal and belittling toward Shante that after enough abuse you got the feeling Shante wanted to quit,” says Hennings. “You don’t do that to a young player. You don’t do that to any player. But such was Charles.”

Switzer did his best to ignore Haley; to treat him in the manner Chicago Bulls coach Phil Jackson would deftly handle his new cosmonaut forward, Dennis Rodman. Yet like Jimmy Johnson before him, Switzer tired of Haley’s routine. When he was a peak performer, piling up sacks by the dozen, Haley received some leeway. But now crippled by chronic back pain, he was more hype than substance. In one of the first defensive film sessions of 1995, Haley entered the conference room with a blanket, sat down on the floor, and said, “Now y’all wake me up when No. 94 comes on the screen.”

“Charles became pathetic,” says a teammate. “In his prime I never saw a guy who could drink an entire case of beer at night and have three sacks over Erik Williams in practice the next morning. But late in his Dallas days he wasn’t the same player.” In an October 1 loss at Washington, Switzer delivered the ultimate insult, replacing Haley in the starting lineup with—of all people—Carver. The veteran was smoldering, and grew even angrier when Switzer criticized his play to the media after the game. Haley went off to teammates, ripping his coach as a backstabbing SOB. Haley’s followers, including younger defensive linemen like Lett and Tolbert, joined their mentor in turning on Switzer. Even when the coach apologized, Haley remained incensed. “Charles was the crazy guy in your neighborhood who was drunk on Monday, functional on Tuesday, and in church on Sunday,” says Freddie Coger, a free agent linebacker cut in camp. “You try and figure him out, but it’s not possible.”

On the weekend following Haley’s benching, the Cowboys hosted Green Bay. When the Packers began to rally back from a 24–3 deficit late in the second quarter, Aikman walked up to Haley—who was sit
ting out with the back injury—and said, “I hope you’re fucking happy.”

“I was just standing there, eating sunflower seeds, trying to ignore it,” Haley wrote in his autobiography. “Eventually I said, ‘OK, I’ll play. Just leave me the fuck alone.’” He entered the contest and hounded Packers quarterback Brett Favre into repeated rushed throws. The Cowboys ended up beating the Packers 34–24 to improve to 5–1. Afterward the media horde was all over Haley, who tore into Switzer. “It’s bullshit what’s going on,” he said. “I’m getting blamed for everybody’s play. They can do this stuff to my mind this year, but they’ll never get me back.”

Watching from across the locker room, Aikman chuckled. “Sideshows, circuses, controversies,” he said. “Just another week in the life of the Cowboys.”

H
E OFFICIALLY ARRIVED
on September 28, 1995, a hobbled man with a healthy contract and the hope of a city resting upon his shoulders. Deion Sanders was not merely the football phenom who would save the Cowboys’ porous pass defense (and, as he demanded, play a little receiver, too). No, he was the football phenom who would save the Cowboys.

Need to shut down Jerry Rice one-on-one? Deion Sanders.

Need a punt or kickoff returned for a touchdown? Deion Sanders.

Need an offensive threat to draw attention from Michael Irvin? Deion Sanders.

Though Sanders moved to Texas in late September, going so far as to purchase a $2.95 million home in the suburb of Plano, he came holding a black cane, his left ankle cocooned in a soft cast. In the month before his scheduled October 29 debut against the Atlanta
Falcons, Sanders planned on adjusting his family to a new location, rehabbing his injury, and—most important—getting to know his teammates.

If there was any apprehension caused by the arrival of the team’s newest superstar on that first day, it evaporated quickly. As Sanders entered the locker room, offensive lineman Nate Newton, the Cowboys’ resident jokester, pressed PLAY on the CD player and blasted the volume. A catchy beat filled the air. Players started dancing. And pointing. And laughing. It was a rap tune. But not just any rap tune.

Now playing: “Must Be the Money”

Album:
Prime Time

Year of Release: 1994

Label: Bust-It Records

Artist: Deion Sanders

Genre: Ear Melting

From a pair of 100-watt speakers on a table in the center of the room, Sanders began to sing/speak/croak:

Well all right

Yeah

You know ever since I turned pro in 1989

When I signed the dotted line

It was strange!

’Cause things change

For the better and for the worse

So I called my mama and she said “Baby,”

Must be the money…

Sanders could not stop chuckling. The Cowboy locker room felt like home.

“That was so funny,” says Cory Fleming, the Cowboy wide receiver. “It was important Deion could laugh at himself, because Nate played that song every friggin’ day for a month.” Plastered throughout Sanders’s new locker were forty color Xerox copies of him interfering with Irvin in the ’94 NFC Championship Game—the play that, had a flag been thrown, could have changed the outcome. “In big red letters
Mike wrote INTERFERENCE on each one,” says Jim Schwantz, the linebacker. “Just hilarious.”

On one of his early days with the team, Sanders ran into Alundis Brice, who just so happened to wear uniform No. 21, Sanders’s digits of choice, at a Dallas-based BMW dealer. The rookie defensive back had long wanted to own a BMW 325i, and he was here to make it a reality. “Brice, what are you doing?” asked Sanders.

“I’m gonna buy this car tomorrow,” he said. “But I first have to call my agent and set it up.”

“It’s your first sports car?” asked Sanders.

“Yup.”

“Are you gonna pay cash for it?” Sanders asked.

“Yup.”

Sanders nodded and drove off.

The next morning, Brice reported to Valley Ranch and was dismayed to spot his dream car—a brand-new metallic blue 325i with all the trimmings—parked in the players’ lot. “I can’t believe this,” he thought. “Somebody bought
my
car.”

When he approached his locker, Brice noticed the keys on his stool alongside a note from Sanders. It read: NOW GIVE ME MY DAMN JERSEY!

“I wore numbers 22 and 38 in college [at the University of Mississippi], but they gave me 21 with the Cowboys,” Brice says. “I had no emotional attachment to it. So when I read that note, I took my jersey down, hung it in his locker, and got a new number. I’ll never forget him doing that.”

With such acts of grace and kindness, it took Sanders little time to develop a following in the Cowboys clubhouse. Like any American office space, Dallas had its cliques, usually divided along lines of race and age. White veterans like Aikman, Daryl Johnston, and Jay Novacek could be found in one pocket. The black defensive linemen, headed by Haley, were in another. Now Sanders was fronting a new group—the younger defensive players who envied both his game and his lifestyle.

This is where the problems began.

For all his Jim Thorpe-esque skills, Sanders was sleeping-dog lazy. In practices, he went all out every third or fourth play and refused to wear shoulder pads because, he would say, “I’m not gonna tackle anyone anyway.” In meeting rooms, he was known to doodle and doze off. Told early on that Cowboys who refused to participate in the team’s weight training regimen would be fined, Sanders dramatically whipped out his checkbook and jotted down a five-digit figure.

When Mike Woicik, the team’s gruff strength and conditioning coach, complained about Sanders’s indifference, Switzer sided with his new star. “We’re talking about Deion Sanders here,” Switzer told Woicik. “If he doesn’t want to do something, he doesn’t have to.”

Woicik was speechless. Credited by many players as a key to the back-to-back Super Bowls, Woicik was a no-nonsense taskmaster who demanded maximum effort. “For Mike, anything short of a funeral was an unacceptable excuse to miss a session,” says Kevin Smith. “Mike had the personality of a lamp, but if you had to bench-press he knew exactly how many you were supposed to do. When you came in and you didn’t do it, he’d say, ‘You were out fuckin’ around last night. You must’ve been drinking last night. You must’ve been drinking two nights ago.’ He’d be pissed. He wouldn’t speak to you for a week. If you tested on the bench and you didn’t make it, he wouldn’t say a word to you for a whole week until you came in and did it. That’s how he was. Your goals were his goals.”

Throughout the locker room, Woicik was as respected as any Cowboy coach or official. And Deion Sanders had the nerve to treat him…
like this
?

Who were the Dallas Cowboys becoming?

“I still remember Deion’s first team meeting,” says Clayton Holmes, the veteran cornerback. “We were so fundamental about film. The way we studied it was critical. Well, Deion comes in, puts his feet up on a table, and doesn’t even watch.” When Dave Campo, the Cowboys’ new defensive coordinator, asked the $35 million man to break down a play, Sanders let out a sly laugh. “Hey, Coach,” he said, pointing toward the screen, “I got that dude right there. Wherever he goes I
go. All that Cover Two stuff you’re talking about—y’all work that out.”

Seeing that the Cowboys’ defensive back meetings lasted significantly longer than they had in Atlanta or San Francisco, Sanders took a page out of the Barry Bonds Playbook by investing in a black leather executive’s chair and rolling it into the conference room. As his peers sat in standard metal folding chairs, Sanders lounged in comfort. “Guys thought that was kind of funny,” says Schwantz. “Maybe not right—but funny.”

Although most veterans accepted Sanders’s ego and indifference in exchange for the promise of otherworldly play, Aikman—who had offered to defer part of his salary to help Dallas afford the defensive back—was disgusted. It was bad enough Switzer approached discipline as if he were the proprietor of the Moonlite Bunny Ranch. Now here was “Neon Deion,” teaching via example that image is everything and practice is overrated. From across the locker room, the quarterback would watch Sanders’s postgame dressing ritual and cringe. As Jeff Rude of the
Dallas Morning News
described it: “Most people slip on a shirt when they get dressed. Deion puts on a jewelry store.” Around his neck, Sanders placed two thick gold chains with dangling diamond-studded 21s. He wore a diamond-studded Rolex watch, two gold diamond bracelets, and matching diamond horseshoe earrings.

“There was a division between Deion and Troy that began to bubble over,” says Kevin Smith. “We called it ‘Double Doors’ at Valley Ranch. Once we walked through those double doors it was football. We could laugh and joke, but it was all about football. To Aikman, that was sacred.

“When Deion came in, something changed for the worse. Guys who should have been studying football on a Wednesday at twelve o’clock were focused on other things. Deion was such a freaky athlete that he could shake one leg and be ready to cover anyone. But the guys following his lead weren’t nearly as talented. You know what they say about dogs that chase cars—they don’t live long.”

One of Sanders’s most devoted disciples was Sherman Williams, the rookie running back with noteworthy talent but zero work ethic. “Deion had Sherman’s ear a hundred percent,” says Kevin Smith. “He would show up around ten o’clock, eleven o’clock in the morning, smelling like weed and rolling with a posse. Guys like Sherman needed to be reminded of the importance of hard work. That did
not
come from Deion.”

“You led by example,” adds Dale Hellestrae, the offensive lineman. “And Deion’s example wasn’t very good.”

Sanders made his debut on October 29, when the Cowboys thumped the Falcons, 28–13, in Atlanta. The stars of the game were (ho-hum) Emmitt Smith (26 carries, 167 yards), Irvin (10 receptions, 135 yards), and Aikman (19 of 25, 198 yards, 2 touchdowns), yet the spotlight belonged to Prime Time. It was his moment in the sun.
His day.
In forty-four defensive sets, Falcons quarterback Jeff George threw his way twice. The first time, receiver Bert Emanuel beat Sanders for an 11-yard gain. The second, Sanders batted down the ball.

Though he talked as if he were the Muhammad Ali of the gridiron, Sanders’s play in 1995 was merely OK. In nine games as a defensive back, Sanders intercepted 2 passes and contributed a paltry 22 tackles (that’s a robust $318,182 per tackle). “Personally,” says one Cowboy, “I thought Kevin Smith was a better player.” Whereas the other primary cornerbacks—Smith, Larry Brown, and Clayton Holmes—embraced contact, Sanders was a feather duster. When he tackled, it was with the gusto of a ninety-year-old woman. “One time a running back ran a sweep toward him, and Deion dove halfhearted into the turf,” says Case. “We’re watching film the next day, razzing him pretty good. As serious as could be, he said, ‘I saw that dude coming and I had to make a business decision.’”

Amid one of the most drama-packed seasons in team history, it was easy to forget that Dallas was the class of the NFL. Switzer’s team improved to 7–1 with the Atlanta victory, prompting some columnists to predict a seamless return to the Super Bowl. Through eight games
Emmitt Smith led the NFL in rushing with 979 yards, Irvin had caught 58 passes, and, with 9 touchdown passes and only 2 interceptions, Aikman was as potent as ever.

Then, on Monday, October 30, the
Dallas Morning News
broke yet another Cowboy-related bombshell: Leon Lett and Clayton Holmes had violated the league’s substance-abuse policy and would be suspended for four games. For both men it was the second failed test.

“That was the point where people started to see that the Cowboys had a drug problem,” says Jean-Jacques Taylor, the
Morning News
football writer. “There were a lot of guys using, but it’s not always easy to tell. I had an uncle who used to smoke crack on weekends, no problem. But he had a really nice-looking girlfriend who was a beautician. He turned her on to it one weekend and she was working the corner a month later.

“The Cowboys were sort of like that. Some guys could do drugs and handle it. But guys like Clayton and Leon couldn’t. Leon’s problem was he was stupid. Leon would go to a party, have a good time, the joint would come around the circle, and he’d take a hit. He knew a drug test was coming up, but he didn’t think he’d test positive. Just plain stupid.”

In past decades, Cowboys who wanted to smoke pot or snort cocaine would begin their nights at Holmes’s home, then head out to the Cowboys Sports Café or a strip club. During the Switzer Era, however, a handful of players came up with a new, easier-than-ever way to do what they desired without running the risk of being caught by spouses or the media. In the beginning, it was merely known as “The House”—a handsome two-story brick home with a faux Georgian façade on a suburban cul-de-sac next to the Valley Ranch facility. As word of the Cowboys Sports Café had gotten out, players had grown tired of wading through an ocean of celebrity seekers. “So to keep the BS down, a couple of guys got together and got a house,” says Newton. “The White House.”

Located at 115 Dorsett Drive, the abode was initially rented in 1994 under the name of one Alvin Craig Harper. Any hope of keeping
things hush-hush was obliterated when residents of the exclusively white, low-key community noticed their new 6-foot-4, 300-pound African-American neighbors escorting an endless conveyor belt of large-breasted, blond-haired women in Pez-sized miniskirts. Newton insists the White House was a haven for neither prostitution (“What did we need prostitutes for? Women laid down for us”) nor drugs (“Never saw ’em”), yet his take is disputed by many. “I’m not going to lie—I went there several times,” says Brice, the rookie cornerback. “But I was afraid to try any of the drugs. Because I knew myself, and I liked to have fun. Anything potentially addictive scared me.”

“It was a frat house,” says Mike Fisher, the team’s beat writer for the
Fort Worth Star-Telegram.
“But most frat houses don’t specialize in hookers and cocaine.”

To visualize the White House, picture a relatively nice suburban home with a swimming pool in the back and a driveway packed with Jaguars, Bentleys, BMWs, and Ferraris. Then walk through the front door (no need to knock—it was always unlocked) and check out the enormous televisions, the pool table, the wet bar, and the prostitutes (often wearing nothing but the gold chains supplied by the residents). Oh, don’t forget the handful of video cameras hidden throughout the various bedrooms, allegedly installed by Dennis Pedini, one of Irvin’s close friends. “Everything that happened in the White House I’m assuming Pedini had on camera,” says Kevin Smith. “He didn’t tell the guys they were being filmed at the time, but—surprise!—they were.”