A LOOK AT TWO OF THE NEXT RAM, RAIDER OPPONENTS : DASHING COWBOY : Ex-Bruin Sherrard Takes the Fast Lane on the Field but a Slower Lane Off It

Yessiree, Mr. Glamour himself returns home this weekend. Mr. First-Round Draft Choice, Numero Uno, Captain Holdout. He owns the Metroplex.

That’s right, Mike Sherrard.

You remember him: struggling walk-on earns scholarship at UCLA and goes on to become the school’s all-time leading pass receiver. It’s coming back now, isn’t it?

Sherrard, slicker than a con artist, leaves UCLA with a fancy resume that includes a history degree (la-dee-da), a pedigree (his mother was a hurdler in the 1964 Olympics) and the fastest dashes this side of the NFL draft.

The Dallas Cowboys, no dummies, notice this. How hard it must have been for Gil Brandt, the team’s player personnel director, to look composed while drooling.

Three times the Cowboys requested Sherrard’s attendance for a tryout, as if they didn’t believe their stopwatches.

Three times Sherrard delivered.

Then, with Sherrard apparently bound for New York and the Giants, the Cowboys made a last-moment trade to improve their draft standing and chose Sherrard.

So now he’s back. Back in So Cal--home--for Sunday night’s game with the Rams. Except this time he’s bigger, better and badder. . . .

OK, that’s enough of that . The truth, please:

-Yes, he was the Cowboys’ No. 1 draft pick, and a fine one at that. But to be honest, this other guy, Herschel Something-or-other, gets more publicity.

--No, he doesn’t exactly own the Dallas area, not yet, at least. He rents. It’s a nice apartment, that is, if you don’t mind the occasional visits from field mice.

Each day before Sherrard leaves for work, he sets out a small dish of poison pellets for the mice to munch on.

--And yes, he does drive a fancy car. It’s a black Japanese import and it does everything except tie a Windsor knot. Start the engine and your seat belt automatically glides into place.

It’s a loaner, actually. If Sherrard doesn’t mind signing a few autographs now and then, the car dealer doesn’t mind lending him this little dragster dressed in a tuxedo.

That’s about it for living on the edge. His one-bedroom place, which he gets at a discount, costs him a whopping $390 a month. That won’t buy you a good refrigerator box on a corner sidewalk lot in Los Angeles.

Shortly after he signed a four-year, $1.45-million contract in August, Sherrard got a call from his agent, Leigh Steinberg.

“How are you doing?” Steinberg asked. “You settled in yet?”

“Yeah, I’ve got a place,” Sherrard said. “It’s new and it’s right near the practice field.”

Steinberg was impressed.

“That’s great. How much is it costing you?”

“Three-ninety,” Sherrard answered.

“Whaaaat? Three-ninety? Mike, you can afford a nice place,” Steinberg said.

Sherrard stayed put--field mice and all. A day in his life goes something like this:

Meetings at Camp Landry at 10 a.m., followed by lunch. On this day, Sherrard dines at Chez Dairy Queen. Patrons stop by for autograph requests. Sherrard, pleasant and polite, signs scraps of paper and Dairy Queen receipts.

“Thank ya,” one gentleman says. “Now what’s wrong with y’all?”

The Cowboys are 7-6 and struggling to earn a wild-card playoff spot. Sherrard just signs and smiles.

“I’m not sure,” he says. “I hope we turn it around.”

After lunch, Sherrard races home, checks the saucer sprinkled with pellets and sets the timer on his video recorder. He loves “Days of Our Lives.” Just has to have his daily soap opera fix.

Then it’s time to leave. Practice is at 1, and Sherrard needs every minute of work he can get. Not long ago, he became a starter, replacing veteran Mike Renfro in the lineup.

Practice ends about 3:30. Then come more meetings. His workday ends about 5:30. Mr. Excitement returns home and watches his soap opera or maybe shares a barbecue with nearby neighbor and teammate Mark Walen, another UCLA guy who majored in history. “It’s like college without worrying about the studying,” Sherrard says.

This is the good life, all right.

Sherrard used to visit the Cowboy training camp in Thousand Oaks. And don’t think Brandt didn’t notice. He smiled when informed of Sherrard’s time in the 40-yard dash--about 4.4--and winked when Sherrard shook hands. “His fingers come halfway up your wrists,” he said.

One problem: “He was very awkward catching passes . . . he gets his hands turned funny. Early on during his career, we were concerned that maybe he wasn’t a real good receiver,” Brandt said.

So the Cowboys later asked UCLA for film of Sherrard. Scouts looked at 20 rolls. “He only dropped one pass,” Brandt said. “One pass in all those games.”

The Cowboys had to have Sherrard and traded first- and fifth-round picks for the San Francisco 49ers’ drafting spot. That’s how Sherrard became a Cowboy.

The contract holdout soon followed. Sherrard had been warned by Steinberg to expect the worst. It happened, as the Cowboys offered, said Steinberg at the time, a package about $1 million less than Sherrard deserved.

For 32 days, Sherrard waited. Each day he opened his planning calendar and crossed out another number.

They finally came to terms, though, and already Sherrard is second in the NFL in yards per catch with 20.8. He has 29 receptions, but for 603 yards and 5 touchdowns.

“We have missed so many big plays to Mike,” said Paul Hackett, who is responsible for the Cowboys’ pass offense. “If we had caught half of those big plays, he’d be more dramatic than what he has done. He’s obviously already made a dramatic impact on our offense.”

Sherrard is the Cowboy receiving corps’ lone star, someone who can cause a pass defense to reconsider its coverage. Earlier in the season, teams usually assigned a cornerback to cover Sherrard. Now, Hackett said, a safety is added.

“They have loosened up their coverage,” he said. “Over the last couple of years, they’ve played tighter and tighter on the Cowboys. We had possession-type receivers until Mike. . . . But now, when (Sherrard) is out there, we’re seeing a much softer coverage.”

About time, too. Sherrard still remembers his exhibition game against the Raiders in August. Nothing soft about going against Lester Hayes.

The Cowboys had the ball and had taken timeout when Sherrard entered the game. “I was in the huddle and I was real nervous,” he said. “This was my first time ever playing pro.”

Hayes became the Welcome Wagon.

“Hey, rookie!” Hayes yelled. “Rookie, you gonna try to go deep on me? Rookie, don’t go deep on me!”

Sherrard poked his head out of the Cowboy huddle. “Actually I was laughing . . . to keep from crying because I was scared.”

Tony Dorsett saw what was happening. “Hey, Mike, don’t worry about that,” he said. “Don’t listen to him.”

Hayes and Sherrard went about their business. “That’s all he said,” Sherrard said. “Then he was real nice. I was surprised. He was very cordial.”

Lester Hayes--cordial?

“I was surprised, too,” Sherrard said. “I was a Raider fan growing up, you know, the intimidating style. But he was very nice to me on the field.”

Can a football player be charming? Perhaps that is Sherrard’s real gift, this ability to skip through life with a smile and an understanding of priorities.

He wears a Swatch instead of a Rolex. He saves his money as if he were still back at UCLA, hoarding quarters for the laundry room. But wait--a spending spree is planned.

“I’ve talked to the principal of my old high school and I’m going to set up a scholarship there,” he said. “I’m going to give money back to UCLA for the tutoring program. And here, I’m still trying to find a charity that I want to donate money to.”

Skip. Skip.

“I put things in perspective all the time,” he said. “Football is just a game. I mean, it’s my profession, but I don’t think of it as any big deal. People say, ‘Mike, why are you so level-headed?’ Why shouldn’t I be? Football is just a job. It’s no big deal, nothing really to brag about.”

Mr. Jet Set pulls into the Cowboy parking lot. He has 10 minutes to get ready for practice. “See you later,” he says.

Sunday, to be exact. And by the way, welcome home.