Annual Interest : Thousand Oaks and Cowboys Have Matured Together

Five years ago, John Thaler moved to Thousand Oaks after spending 18 years in Cleveland. Already, Thaler--a Meisterbaker who was born and raised in Salzburg, Austria--has become an avid fan of his community’s favorite football team . . . what’s this, za Dallaz Kaawboyz? Ach, du lieber .

Thousand Oaks, of course, has been the site of the Cowboys training camp for 22 years. Last week, the Dallas rookies gathered at Cal Lutheran College to start the Cowboys 23rd camp there. And, Herr Thaler, who provides the Cowboys camp with all of their baked goods, is glad, jawohl .

“Ah, the Rams are OK,” he says. “The Raiders too, ja , ja . I don’t vant to offend anybody, you know. Except the Express, I don’t know.

“But, I’m Kaawboy fan. I vant the Kaawboys to vin the Zuper Bowl.”

Thaler, certainly, is not alone in his line of zinking . Many of the residents of the Thousand Oaks area consider the Cowboys to be, at least in part, their own.

Says Alex Fiore, mayor pro tem for Thousand Oaks: “There’s a large group here that backs the Cowboys. Their being here has given us a feeling of what being associated with a pro sports team is all about.

“Some people look at them as the Thousand Oaks Cowboys.”

Management at a Simi Valley radio station, KWNK, thinks there is enough interest in the Cowboys that the station will broadcast Dallas regular-season games to the Thousand Oaks area. Says Randy Rosenbloom, sports director at the station: “It’s something a lot of people want to hear. They had 2,000 people out there to watch a rookie scrimmage. So they’re interested.”

Mary Cadden, who has worked for the past 16 years at the Westlake Inn--a Cowboys hangout--says that she and a group of waitresses flew to Miami for Super Bowl XIII, when Dallas played the Pittsburgh Steelers.

“We root for them like they’re ours,” Cadden says. “We like having them around. They are friendly and polite--we love ‘em.” Then she adds: “Besides, they’re big tippers.”

Overall, the Cowboys’ presence in Thousand Oaks has not been significant economically, but it has been important as a community public relations tool.

“They put us on the map,” says Fiore. “Because they’ve been here, we have had more prestige. That’s the main thing.”

When the Cowboys first came to Thousand Oaks during the summer of 1963, the Conejo Valley was indeed a dust bowl. There were only 3,000 residents in the area. Appropriately, it was mostly ranch land that supported cattle and horses.

At the time, Cal Lutheran was a new college--and the Cowboys holed up in the new on-campus dorms before any of the students.

In three years, the Cowboys had tried three different sites--Pacific University in Oregon, Minnesota’s St. Olaf College and Northern Michigan University--but had not found what team President Tex Schramm wanted.

Before the 1963 NFL season, Los Angeles Times special events director Glenn Davis asked the Cowboys to play the Rams in the annual Times charity football game. Schramm, a former Rams executive who thought the game would bring good publicity to his new team, agreed to participate if Davis could find a suitable training site.

Davis went to the Thousand Oaks Fire Department for weather records and found temperatures to be 10 degrees cooler there than at other prospective training sites in Southern California. The Cowboys settled in at CLC.

Although Dallas played in the charity game with the Rams for a number of years in the 1960s and ‘70s, they are no longer a regular participant. Which raises an obvious question: Why are the Cowboys still training here?

“We’re here because at this time of the year in Texas it’s over 100 degrees,” says Schramm. “We can’t get as much work done in those conditions.”

While it is true that the weather is a factor--to beat the Texas heat, the Cowboys return to Thousand Oaks during the exhibition season to extend preseason workouts--Dallas insiders say the team continues to train in Thousand Oaks because Schramm, a native Southern Californian, likes it there. Secondly, they say, Coach Tom Landry wants to isolate his players during training camp.

Says Dan Reeves, a former player and coach for Dallas and now coach of the Denver Broncos: “Although I’ve been married 21 years, it’s really been only 19 because two years of my life I’ve been isolated out in Thousand Oaks. From a football standpoint, you can’t beat it. But it’s hard being away from your family for that long.”

Blackie Sherrod, a columnist for the Dallas Morning News who has covered the Cowboys for years, says Landry wants to segregate players from their families and friends so they’ll concentrate on football.

“They call it Fort Landry out there,” says Sherrod. “He wants to cut out distractions. There’s no question he wants his players’ undivided attention.”

“That’s the purpose of a training camp,” Landry explains. “One hundred percent concentration on football. And this is a good place to do it.”

Although the Cowboys are apparently content with the Cal Lutheran site, there has been some talk they might discontinue training in Thousand Oaks. The reason: a new complex outside of Dallas called “The Cowboys Center.”

Although the Cowboys have developed three practice fields at the complex, Cowboys business manager Dan Werner says the team is not relocating.

“The fact that we’ve developed the facility has caused concerns, but we can get in two or three workouts here. That makes this better than trying to work in Dallas. There we can only work after 5:00 p.m.”

The Cowboy practices draw over 500 people to the CLC practice fields each day. Most workouts are open to the public. “You can walk right up and talk with them--Landry, White, Dorsett,” says Cole McDaniel, a lieutenant of the Ventura County Sheriff’s Department and admittedly a big Cowboys fan. “That’s the key to their popularity here. They are open with the community. Especially with the kids.”

Indeed. Dallas practices overflow with “Romper Room”-age children. When Danny White walks from the dorms to the practice field, he’s got a neighborhood boy--a sort of underaged manservant--two steps behind carrying his helmet and other personal items. Same with Too Tall Jones.

All of this helmet carrying has become a tradition. Every year, each Cowboy has his own personal helper. Tony Dorsett’s helmet carrier has been with him three straight camps.

Besides their unofficial help, the Cowboys hire 10 youngsters from the community as ball boys. Each year, players pitch in money to fly one ball boy back to a game in Dallas during the season.

“The kids get a chance to meet their stars,” says Jerry Fowler, equipment manager for the team. “They get a little money and they make friends with the players. It helps us, plus it’s good for community relations.”

Conversely, Dallas’ first unofficial ball boy from Thousand Oaks, Mike Hagen, who hung around Cowboy camps long enough to eventually land a full-time job as a scout, says the community doesn’t take advantage of having the Cowboys in town. “I’ve always thought they could have played it up bigger, especially from a public relations point. The college has expressed a lot of interest, but the community--they’ve just kind of said, ‘Yeah, the Cowboys are up there, I’ve heard of them.’ ”

The biggest Cowboy event with Thousand Oaks is the “Welcome Cowboys Dinner,” an annual affair featuring “Texas-sized steaks” and speeches by Dallas management and city officials. Everybody eats, then more or less praises the virtues of the community. Proceeds from the dinner go to the Community Leaders Club, which distributes the funds among the college and other organizations.

Cal Lutheran, perhaps, has benefited from the Cowboys camp more than Thousand Oaks itself. The school, founded in 1960--the same year as the Cowboys, remains small with an enrollment of 1,500 undergraduate students and 900 graduate students. But CLC has received visibility from the Cowboys through the media, as well as financial support.

“We probably have the best facilities for a small college in the nation,” says Bob Shoup, CLC football coach. “The Cowboys’ facilities are the finest. We have three football fields, a $500,000 dressing facility and excellent weight training facilities. Some of our facilities were developed by Dallas. Some were developed by us for Dallas and some projects were joint.

“We were cash poor for many years. We were on the verge of closing--the Cowboys helped us.”

Although school officials and the Cowboys offer sketchy details regarding financial gifts, Shoup says Dallas gave CLC $50,000 for their locker room and proceeds from an annual blue-white scrimmage go to the college.

In return, the college provides the Cowboys with the setting Schramm and Landry want at a price one Dallas source described as “reasonable.”

Interestingly, Cal Lutheran’s football program has paralleled the Cowboys’--although on a smaller scale.

The first year Dallas won a division title, 1966, CLC won its first league championship. Following the 1971 season, Dallas won the ’72 Super Bowl. That year, CLC won the small college national championship. The year the Cowboys moved to Texas Stadium, Cal Lutheran opened its new stadium. From 1963 to 1982, Cal Lutheran never had a losing season. In that period, the Cowboys had 18 consecutive winning seasons.

Landry is the only coach Dallas has ever had. CLC has had only Shoup.

“As you can see,” says Shoup, “we’ve had a good partnership through the years.”

And Schramm says the partnership will go on ad infinitum. “It’s been a good thing. We’ve helped them, they’ve helped us. We have had a great relationship and we have every intent of staying here in the future.”

As one Texan put it, in hallowed tones: “Why, this place is as much a part of the Dallas Cowboys as . . . well . . . as Texas Stadium itself.

“It’s like a suburb of Dallas. Sure as shootin’, pard’, this is like a home away from home. Except the steaks, they ain’t quite as big.”