Cowboys, White Say There’s No Scandal

Danny White was involved in a serious discussion with reporters at the Dallas Cowboys’ training facility Thursday when offensive tackle Howard Richards interrupted to tell the quarterback that he had a telephone call.

Excusing himself, White started toward the telephone.

“It’s your bookie,” Richards said, his 262-pound body shaking with laughter.

White smiled, sort of.

Richards could laugh.

So could Coach Tom Landry.

When asked for his reaction to an alleged point-shaving scandal involving the Cowboys, Landry said: “I don’t know anything about it. I know that it looks like I shave points when I coach, but I don’t.”

Neither Richards’ nor Landry’s name was linked to the alleged scandal in the newspapers Thursday morning.

White’s was.

It was revealed this week that a former FBI agent filed a 1982 memorandum that implicated five Cowboys in a conspiracy to shave points during the 1981 and 1982 seasons in exchange for cocaine from reputed drug dealers and bookmakers.

The former FBI agent, Daniel Anthony Mitrione Jr., has since pleaded guilty to charges of conspiracy, bribery and possession of cocaine with intent to distribute.

Mitrione’s memo did not name the five Cowboys.

Nevertheless, five names surfaced in the press.

Besides White, they were current Cowboys Tony Dorsett and Tony Hill, and former Cowboys Ron Springs, now with Tampa Bay, and Butch Johnson, now with Denver.

When asked Wednesday whether any of the names surprised him, Cowboy President Tex Schramm said: “Yes, some of them did. Some of them didn’t.”

Elaborating a day later, he said he did not mean to imply that he thought any of them were guilty of shaving points.

All he meant, he said, was that he wasn’t surprised to see some of the names, particularly considering that three of them had been connected to a previous cocaine investigation.

“I resent that any player was named in this,” Schramm said. “I just think the whole thing is baseless.”

All five players agreed with him.

The Broncos called a press conference on behalf of Johnson, who said: “Right now, I’m completely stunned. I’ve never, will never, have never done anything like that or come close to anything like that.”

Through a Tampa Bay spokesman, Springs said: “I have no idea what they’re talking about.”

Dorsett said: “I think it’s ridiculous. The only good thing about it is . . . I don’t think there is any good thing about it.”

Hill called it bizarre.

“I guess that’s the price you have to pay for being in the limelight,” he said.

That’s the part of being quarterback for the Dallas Cowboys that White has had difficulty accepting.

“If this had been some John Doe supposedly involved in something like this, his name wouldn’t have been all over the newspapers the next day,” White said. “But because it’s me, or any of the rest of us, it’s supposed to be OK. Is that fair?”

“You should have thought of that when you started playing football,” a radio reporter told him.

“Sure,” White said sarcastically, “I was thinking of a situation just like this when I started playing football in junior high.”

When the Cowboys’ director of counseling, former FBI agent Larry Wansley, alerted the quarterback last weekend that his name might surface, White said he thought it was a joke.

“I didn’t think he was serious,” White said. “When I realized he was, it made me a little hot, I guess.”

White is a Mormon who doesn’t drink or smoke. “A Shirley Temple is about the strongest thing I ever put in my body,” he said. “Once, when I was sitting at a table with a friend, I reached for my 7-Up and picked up his screwdriver by mistake. Just the smell of it was enough to nauseate me.”

Now, he was being asked questions about whether he shaved points in exchange for cocaine.

Get used to it, a reporter told him.

“The New York press is waiting for you,” the reporter said.

White rolled his eyes. The Cowboys will play the Giants Sunday night at the New Jersey Meadowlands.

“Hopefully, people know me well enough to realize how silly this whole thing is,” White said. “But I’m sure there are going to be people in Montana who only hear bits and pieces of this garbage and believe it.”

For that reason, White said Thursday that he believes National Football League players should be required to take drug tests.

The NFL Players Assn. allows its members to be tested, but only if it has been established that there is a reasonable cause. If a player’s preseason physical examination, his behavior or his performance leads to suspicion, he can be tested. Otherwise, he can’t be tested.

White said that testing should be extended to include all players.

“I’m in favor of anything that can help,” he said. “We have to do something about the image problem we have in sports before it gets any worse.

“All of us have to be very, very conscious of our public image and try to lead exemplary lives. I think we used to take it for granted that we were above suspicion, but that’s no longer the case.”

Schramm long has been an advocate of mandatory testing for all players.

“The league has always been concerned that players who were involved in drugs could be led into something else, and this is one of those things that drugs can lead to,” he said.

“That’s why we have to get drug use stopped before people get hooked. Drug testing is the only way to get the players’ attention.

“If a story without any foundation, like this one, can attract this much attention, think of how much attention it will attract in a situation where there is basis for it. The players should be concerned about that, and I think they are.”

NFL Commissioner Pete Rozelle said during a press conference three weeks ago that he feared the league’s next scandal could involve cocaine and gambling, saying that he was alerted by the investigation into point-shaving by Tulane basketball players.

Wansley stopped short of that Thursday. The former FBI agent was hired as an adviser for the Cowboys two years ago, when some of the players were making headlines for their connection with various drug-trafficking investigations in Dallas.

“There are so many potential problems,” he said, “I don’t have the luxury of worrying about the next one.”