THE NEW COWBOYS : Rookie Owner and Coach Banking on Rookie QBs

If the Dallas Cowboys are out to corner the market in quality young quarterbacks, they’re off to a fast start.

For openers this spring, they made UCLA’s Troy Aikman the top pick in the 1989 draft.

Then, using their first pick of 1990, the Cowboys got the first player in this summer’s supplemental draft--quarterback Steve Walsh of the University of Miami, a take-charge type who, some say, is a better prospect than Aikman.

Plucking two top quarterbacks out of the same college class obviously seems like a good idea in Dallas, where the new coach, Jimmy Johnson, and the new owner, Jerry Jones, are also National Football League rookies. But in the rest of the NFL, it is causing some merriment.

When asked recently to evaluate Aikman and Walsh as 1989 pros, former Raider coach Tom Flores, who is now running the Seattle Seahawks’ front office, thought a moment and replied: “They’ll look good in practice.”

What Flores means is that NFL games are something else, for a rookie quarterback.

Except in Dallas, the consensus NFL view is that it will be a miracle if the Cowboys can get two rookie quarterbacks ready this year--at the same time--and a near miracle if they can groom even one as a first-season starter.

Nevertheless, the great Dallas experiment is on.

When the Cowboys returned to their annual summer camp this week at California Lutheran University--about an hour west of Los Angeles in the wind and sunshine of the Conejo Valley--they were three deep, on paper, at the key position:

--Aikman is already their No. 1 quarterback. Although his coaches aren’t saying so yet, they have indicated, by the way they are proceeding, that their money is on the tall, smooth Bruin. He seems destined to start the regular-season opener in September, and perhaps even the exhibition opener next month.

“I don’t see that yet,” Aikman said. “But if it happens that way, I’ll be ready to go.”

Said Johnson, who has replaced Tom Landry in Dallas after some big years at the University of Miami: “I’d love to have a talented veteran out there, but I don’t have that yet. And I’m not going to put a shoemaker out there, and sit a talent on the bench.”

--Walsh, the designated backup who was Johnson’s quarterback at Miami last season, would be contending for No. 1 if he had spent the off-season working out with Aikman in Dallas, and if he had come to Thousand Oaks on time. Having hired not one but two agents, he is, predictably, still a holdout, and thus, as a 1989 prospect, far behind the leader.

“We’ll sign him,” owner Jones, a camp visitor, said this week. “We’re working on it every day.”

--Steve Pelluer, the Dallas starter last season and the likely 1989 starter if Landry had returned for his 30th year as coach, is also a holdout. And at this point, Johnson and Jones, who plainly want Walsh on board, just as plainly are indifferent about Pelluer.

Although he has hired only one agent, Pelluer is still demanding about $800,000 a year, which contrasts starkly with the $400,000 Jones is offering.

Pelluer is apparently playing a waiting game. Having familiarized himself with the 70-year history of the NFL, he understands that it’s tough for any pro club to win with a rookie quarterback, and nearly impossible to do so with two.

One difference in Dallas is that Johnson and Jones haven’t been in the NFL these last 70 years.

Or 70 weeks.

AIKMAN UPSTAGED

Practice was over, for one morning at least. And now dozens of onlookers, kids and adults alike, were rushing down from the surrounding hills with pencils, paper, notebooks and some footballs, hunting autographs.

A bystander, keeping an eye on Troy Aikman, was sure they’d all head for the $11-million quarterback, who is friendly and cooperative, though somewhat colorless. And many did. But at least as many headed for Jimmy Johnson, the cocky, colorful new leader.

The strange truth about the Cowboys this year is that a coach is largely upstaging a prominent new quarterback.

At practice, Johnson strides swiftly from one group of players to another, sometimes running, often hopping or jumping about.

“He reminds me of Coach (Barry) Switzer,” said Aikman, who once played for Switzer at Oklahoma.

A stocky, bare-headed figure in a fresh white shirt and blue walking shorts, Johnson is the fastest-moving man on the field. He walks even faster than Notre Dame’s Lou Holtz, and that’s fast. The fans seem to love it.

They weren’t prepared, though, for Johnson’s style. His predecessor, Landry, was reserved, controlled, icy--in all situations. Johnson, who couldn’t be more different, is outgoing and emotional in his approach to every situation.

Landry likes classical music. In Dallas, Johnson’s car radio is always tuned to K-104, or KKDA, the station that appeals to young black listeners. Mostly soul and rap. Johnson music.

And so the mood of the Cowboys has changed completely in one summer. At a mini-camp earlier this month, when Everson Walls, the ebullient cornerback from Grambling, learned that it was Johnson’s 46th birthday, he broke up practice, gathered the players together and led them in a chorus of “Happy Birthday.”

Then he poured a bottle of beer on Johnson’s head. “I suppose that somewhere, someone once sang ‘Happy Birthday’ to Landry,” a veteran player said later. “But there’s no chance that anyone ever poured beer on him.”

For one thing, there was Landry’s formidable hat. The old coach was sometimes called the Hat. The new coach is often called the Hair. Every morning, Johnson teases his ample hair into a perfect wave. He is proud of what is already the most famous hairdo in Dallas.

He is also proud to be the Cowboys’ coach, which, he said, was his lifelong ambition.

Actually, Johnson, who has been called J. J., is more than a coach. He and Jerry Jones, a bright, energetic oilman from Arkansas who is also known as J. J., seem to be running the franchise as partners.

This has prompted Dallas columnist Blackie Sherrod to give the Cowboys a new name, Jaybirds.

Johnson even accompanied Jones to the NFL owners’ meeting in Chicago two weeks ago, when Jones was one of the most influential club owners present. Johnson was the only coach there. In fact, he was the only coach ever seen at an owners’ meeting in July, which, in the NFL, is ordinarily a heavy work month for coaches.

“Jerry wants me involved in everything,” he said of the man who was his teammate, and roommate, at Arkansas 25 years ago.

Thus, in the off-season, it was Johnson who reviewed the club’s complimentary season-ticket list, and slashed it to ribbons.

“From what I’d heard about Jerry Jones, I wasn’t surprised that they’d cut the comp list,” said Bert Rose, a former Cowboy executive who for many years managed the club’s showplace, Texas Stadium. “The thing that did surprise the hell out of me was when Jimmy Johnson himself called to cut me off.”

The new owner’s many economies have stirred up the organization. On his first day in Dallas this year, Jones walked through the office and fired every department head except the ticket seller.

Best known for his efforts to streamline the cheerleaders--whose director, Suzanne Mitchell, promptly resigned--Jones also fired the Cowboy band. This year, Texas Stadium will ring with canned music.

And, naturally, Johnson was involved in preparations for that, too.

When the Cowboy music coordinator went to a Dallas studio to select the tunes that will be played at Dallas games, Johnson went along.

“Throw that out,” he said of one number that seemed lively enough to other listeners. “It’s too dull.”

Jones’ two biggest economies, though, are said to be coming next year. He won’t talk about it yet, but Jaybird watchers say he is about to sell the club’s expensive new executive offices in a Dallas suburb, and also about to abandon the Thousand Oaks training camp.

All operations, including training camp, are due to be consolidated at Texas Stadium, where the Cowboys plan to put a new office building and two practice fields in the parking lot.

Characteristically, Johnson warmly approves.

“California is too cold,” he said. “I like it hot.”

It is clear, for now at least, that he continues to be enthusiastic about everything his old roommate does--and enthusiasm is the quality Jones admires most.

“Enthusiasm breeds energy,” Jones said.

And, he added, it’s energy that moves the world.

A DIFFERENT STAR

Aikman, was leaving town on the last day of mini-camp a few weeks ago when a Cowboy employee, David Pelletier, looked him up.

“Here’s a radio station that would like you to call,” Pelletier said, handing the player a note.

“But I’m on vacation,” Aikman said.

“I know that,” the Cowboy aide replied. “I’m just relaying their message. They’d appreciate a call if you get a chance.”

The payoff is that Aikman obliged. From a vacation retreat in Arizona, he telephoned the station and spent an hour on a talk show. And it wasn’t even a Dallas station. The talk-show host was in San Antonio.

“Troy’s different,” Pelletier said. “Most guys would have lost the note. Others would have forgotten it, and the rest wouldn’t put themselves out on a vacation. Troy had three chances to get out of it, and didn’t take any of them.”

He was like that at UCLA, too. The pressures of pro football could change him someday, but it hasn’t happened yet. Big, fair-haired, unsophisticated and wealthy, he should prove out in time as an ideal first draft choice--if he can throw the long pass. In his first week with the pros, that’s still in doubt, but nothing else seems to be.

Watching him, talking with him, it’s hard to keep in mind that here’s a 22-year-old making $1.8 million a year--on his first job out of college--after agreeing to $11 million for six years.

At training camp, where at 6-foot-4 and 220 pounds he looks like a linebacker, Aikman doesn’t even have a car. High draft choices commonly blow into town driving new convertibles. Aikman bummed a ride to Thousand Oaks with a UCLA friend, Russ Warnick.

To begin his NFL career, the $11-million quarterback, third-highest paid player in the league behind quarterbacks Warren Moon of Houston and John Elway of Denver, arrived for the summer in a 10-year-old truck.

At Cal Lutheran, Aikman shares a two-room apartment with three other players. In Dallas, he has an apartment of his own. He said he will buy a house there after the season. He prefers not to answer questions about his girlfriend, although, he said, they are both fond of Dallas.

Born in West Covina, where his father still lives, Aikman said: “I spent the major part of my growing-up years in Oklahoma. And I’m more comfortable in that environment.”

Accordingly, he couldn’t have been drafted by a team that would have pleased him more.

“My mother and two sisters still live in Oklahoma,” he said. “They’re only a three-hour drive from Texas Stadium. They’ll be there for every game.”

In the meantime, in the absence of rookie Walsh and veteran Pelluer, Aikman is the only bona fide first-string quarterback candidate in a Cowboy uniform.

“For the quarterbacks who are here, this is a great advantage,” he said. “(Walsh) missed all the mini-camps but one. And 60% of the offense is already in.”

In other words, Walsh, eventually, will be playing catchup. And so will Pelluer, the absent five-year veteran from Washington.

Ram Coach John Robinson, comparing Pelluer to a rookie despite his experience in the league, said: “In a new system under a new coach, (he’s) in the same new learning situation as (anyone else).”

And he can only learn here.

With the first exhibition game only two weekends away, Johnson seems about ready to put Aikman in the saddle.

“He’s doing the job,” the coach said.

Ultimately, Johnson wants Aikman and Walsh both. Although the Cowboys are listening to trade offers, high draft choices are rarely traded as rookies.

Johnson seems unconcerned about:

--The quarterback controversies that have plagued so many pro coaches in other years.

--The problems involved in getting two rookie quarterbacks ready, let alone one.

--The probability that preparing two rookie quarterbacks at once will delay the development of both.

--The fact that in what Johnson calls his quarterback-oriented offense, in which “the defense dictates what we do,” he is betting his career on untested rookies.

It won’t be easy. But as of today, J. J. and J. J are still undefeated in the NFL. The Jaybirds are riding high.