XXX Marks Spot of Good Riddance to the Cowboys

Could it have been any more fitting that the last Super Bowl, hopefully the last one the Dallas Cowboys as they are now composed will win, was numeraled XXX? Good riddance to a poor example of a championship team. We can watch the playoffs now without a V chip.

NFL Films, which had no clue what it was starting when it nicknamed them “America’s Team” in the annual highlight film it produces for each team, could call this season’s version “The People vs. the Dallas Cowboys.”

But those who blame the Cowboys’ trials, legal and otherwise, on Jerry Jones and Barry Switzer have short memories. That includes Tom Landry, who told Tom Brokaw last week that he had his Cowboys corralled.

He tried. The Cowboys were the first team to hire a security chief--a former FBI agent--to monitor the players’ off-the-field activities, but the atmosphere surrounding the team still produced the Pete Gent novel, “North Dallas Forty,” that was more fact than fiction. So many players on one Landry team were involved with drugs that it became known as “South America’s Team.”

It would be as foolish to blame the city of Dallas for the Cowboys’ transgressions as for the Kennedy assassination. When winning football teams are involved, however, there is an anything goes attitude in Dallas that exceeds that in any other city. It’s no coincidence that the only college football program to receive the death penalty for trampling NCAA rules was SMU’s.

To Dallas’ credit, there are signs that the majority of people there who do not condone such misbehavior are fed up with it. For the first time, more people there last year were excited about the Texas Rangers than the Cowboys.

*

I knew Denver was in trouble when Sports Illustrated’s latest cover boy was John Elway. . . .

Mike Shanahan is a great coach but inexperienced. He shouldn’t have allowed the Broncos to shut down after they clinched home-field advantage in the playoffs. They went five weeks without playing a meaningful game. It showed. . . .

New England vs. Jacksonville and Green Bay vs. Carolina in the conference championship games. Just like I figured from the start of the season. . . .

George Seifert, Bill Walsh and Willie Brown should put their heads together soon to sort out San Francisco’s quarterback dilemma. . . .

Del Harris has been pleading with the NBA for two years to prohibit players from calling timeouts while flying out of bounds with the ball in their hands. Someone is going to get hurt, he said. Someone did. Shaq. . . .

At his current pace, Laffit Pincay Jr. would become the winningest jockey around his 53rd birthday in 1999. Bill Shoemaker was 58 when he set the record at 8,883. . . .

The rule that assures every NHL team will have a player in the All-Star game creates more interest, even if it does cost a deserving player a berth. Like the Ducks’ Teemu Selanne. . . .

UCLA started out as Jim Harrick’s team. Then some of the players thought it was their team. Now, just in time, it’s looking like Steve Lavin’s team. . . .

Lavin is going to be a good coach somewhere. I hope it’s UCLA. . . .

*

Fortunately for Arizona, freshman guard Mike Bibby was more poised at the free-throw line in the final seconds against Cal last Thursday night than his mother was in the stands. As Bibby calmly sank both shots in the Wildcats’ one-point victory, it appeared as if she would pass out.

At the same time, I couldn’t help but think it was too bad his father had to work that night. USC’s Henry Bibby was earning his first Pac-10 victory as a coach in a game at the Sports Arena against Washington.

When Arizona visits the Trojans 10 days from now, no doubt much will be reported about the strained relations among the Bibbys, with Henry on one side and his ex-wife and Mike on the other.

Still, Henry says he’s intensely interested in Mike’s progress and watches every Arizona game on tape.

“He’s a good little player who’s only going to get better,” Henry says.

Better than Henry was at UCLA?

“It’s been so long, I don’t remember how I played,” he says. “I don’t think he shoots as well as I did, although he can knock a shot down if he’s open. But he’s a whole lot smarter. He knows how and when to make the pass.”

*

While waiting for Michael Dean Perry to get off the field, I was thinking: the NFC has another gimme in the Super Bowl, Bobby Ross is a better fit in college football, the Kings and Ice Dogs would be a good match right now, this should be a Hall of Fame day for Don Sutton.