Commentary : Schramm Deserves a Better Fate

Putting Tex Schramm out to pasture, allowing him to graze into the twilight of football life, is a harsh humilation to this man of competence, intensity and vision. He deserved a better ending to a career that has been replete with rich achievment, including Super Bowl championships and the individual creation of the most widely acclaimed team in all of sports -- the Dallas Cowboys. He affixed his signature and gave it life.

The Cowboys represented the one organization other clubs, in and out of football, respected and tried to emulate. The Cowboys had a way of doing things that carried a certain dignity and professionalism. That’s a total credit to Schramm, who knew how the public, the press and players ought to be treated.

He took the franchise from its woeful expansion days in 1960 to the peak of acceptability and recognition. Schramm is bright, conscientious and was absolutely devoted to making the Cowboys the best they could be in every area of operation. They were the envy of the NFL and held in awe by the opposition.

The new owner, one of the Jones boys from Arkansas, tied a tin can to Tom Landry, a coaching legend, and now Schramm, the president and general manager, has been dealt out of his own office. Schramm is over 21, as they say, and old enough to know how the business sometimes works. It can be vicious.

At 68, it’s true he has had a long, eventful and successful run. The Dallas property is sold to an interloper, Jerry Jones by name, who wants to be foreman of his own ranch and, of course, for the $140 million purchase price is entitled. Schramm didn’t expect any tender loving care and, of course, isn’t being given any.

Realizing he’s on the outside looking in, after his intelligence and acumen built the Cowboys and made them a highly profitable club, has to bring disappointment and pain. Other men, without the credentials, are running “his football team.”

The National Football League, meanwhile, wants him to assume a leadership role in a proposed intercontinental development league, with half the teams in Europe and the others in the United States. The games would be played in the spring of the year, kind of a United States Football League concept, if you can believe it.

There’s no reason to consider the farm teams will be productive or worthwhile. Merely an expense for all concerned. If a would-be player isn’t good enough to make one of 28 present teams, each with 45 man rosters, it reduces him, in most instances to the status of a reject. Football players generally have matured and can either play or can’t play after their college careers.

Putting them in a minor league isn’t going to do much for their ability or bring about improvement. Tex, the good man he is, deserves a better fate than this. He’s hooked on football, no doubt, but at this station in life he shouldn’t have to contend with giving birth to a humpty-dumpty league that sounds as if it’s right out of Hans Christian Andersen.

Too bad. The ability of Schramm should be put to use in the NFL, where he can make a valuable contribution and not some junior varsity circuit that demeans his genius.

It would be more appropriate if Schramm lent his enormous talents to being president or commissioner of some sandlot league in the Dallas suburbs. His qualifications are extensive -- because he’s strong-willed, fair, honest and carries a vast knowledge of the sport.

No doubt the NFL will be in favor of Schramm turning his attention to this embryonic undertaking. This way the league will be relieved of the embarrassment of having someone as capable as Tex out of work. Having his name linked to the start-up overseas will provide a stamp of credibility for whatever it turns out to be.

But it’s a job that carries no prestige or standing. It is hoped he will reconsider and tell the club owners to give the position to some broken-down coach who needs a paycheck. Tex Schramm is just too good to be involved with a rinky-dink bush league that will play its games during the wrong time of the year.