This Team Is Jimmy’s Now, Not America’s

“Yond Cassius has a lean and hungry look . . . . Such men are dangerous.”

--Shakespeare, “Julius Caesar.”

Across the desk from me sat the man who wasn’t Tom Landry.

He was kind of a disappointment.

I mean, he didn’t look like what you would expect--a kind of furtive-looking guy who wouldn’t look you in the eye, who would have this kind of shifty look about him--sallow complexion, nervous tic in one eye, biting his nails a lot, mumbling his answers, looking at his watch. The kind of guy you’d expect to be asked questions like, “All right, Joe, what did you do with the baby?”

This guy is the most unwanted guy in Texas. You’d think he came to blow up the Alamo, rob the noon stage, sell whiskey to the Indians. Definitely a guy in a black hat. Wyatt Earp would run him out of town. Posses would be after him.

This is a guy who has done unspeakable things in the eyes of Texans. He comes into focus like the dirty little coward who shot Mr. Howard and laid Jesse James in his grave. The cocky kid who stalked the legendary gunfighter and shot him when he wasn’t looking, the guy who got Wild Bill Hickok in the back during the card game.

You see, Tom Landry was the biggest hero on the range since Sam Houston or Davy Crockett. He was as Texas as mesquite. He had this long prairie squint in his eye, the dry talking style of a guy who spent his life in a bunkhouse or on a saddle.

In Dallas, indeed in most of the country, he came out in the public mind as a cross between Gary Cooper and Marshal Dillon. He had all the old-fashioned verities. He was like the hero of the Saturday matinee. He’d order sarsaparilla in the bar, then blow the gun out of the hand of the blackguard he saw trying to dry-gulch him in the barroom mirror.

Everybody loved Tom Landry. Everybody loved the Dallas Cowboys. Detractors liked to sneer that the catch phrase, America’s Team , was made-up PR hype, but that wasn’t true. Every kid who had ever gone to a John Wayne movie liked the idea of Landry’s Cowboys.

They were, like the prototype, fast, tough, smart, dangerous--but fair. They fit the image. They almost let you draw first. There was something sad about them. They were a great team but they kept losing to lucky bounces, unconscionable climatic extremes.

But they were self-reliant, never complained. Landry was better in defeat than any coach I have ever interviewed. He never hid or cursed. He was the same in victory. He never gloated or moaned.

He got into five Super Bowls. He barely missed half a dozen more.

So, here was this man sitting across from me who had Landry’s office, Landry’s team, Landry’s job.

I must say, Jimmy Johnson didn’t look the part. You expect a guy with a scar on his cheek, parrot on his shoulder, tattoos on his biceps.

But Jimmy Johnson looks as if his nickname might be Beaver. He’s got these apple cheeks and lots of honey-colored hair, which he wears like a helmet. His blue eyes twinkle. He doesn’t bite his lip. He has this kind of merry look about him. Put a white beard on him and he could be Santa Claus.

He doesn’t have this lean and hungry look. He’s kind of fat, to tell you the truth. Or at least plump. And he doesn’t care.

He looks like a guy who would eat a taco. He likes ice in his Heinekens. He gives you the impression he’s laughing at you.

Interviewers don’t scare him. He likes the attention. He looks as if he might like to sell you something, like the Brooklyn Bridge. He looks as if he could, too.

Is he worried about replacing a legend?

Are you kidding? Jimmy Johnson doesn’t worry. Jimmy Johnson sleeps nights. Like a baby. You get the feeling he expects to have Texas eating out of his hand in no time.

He is as Texan as a branding iron. Port Arthur-born and bred. He spent his youth cleaning out the engine rooms of oil barges. He learned his first football under a coach whose name was Buckshot, which should tell you all you need to know about Johnson’s football philosophy : Whip their butts and the score will follow.

Nobody ever called his University of Miami squads America’s Team . They were more like the Dade County jail’s team. Writer Rick Reilly once said they were the only college footballers in the country who had their team photo taken from the front and the side. They used to come into town like a motorcycle gang, wearing bush hats and battle fatigues. They arrived at bowlgames like the Germans entering Paris.

In Dallas, they gave Tom Landry a ticker-tape parade when he was relieved as coach. They all but gave Johnson and his owner, Jerral Jones, 48 hours to get out of town. They got the press the Capone mob might have expected when they hit town. The nicest thing they were called was carpetbaggers.

Does any of this bother Jimmy Johnson? He smiles sweetly. He’s got a 10-year contract. His owner was his college roommate and teammate.

He’s replacing a legend? Jimmy will remind you he’s replacing a 3-13 record.

Anyway, he’s been there before. When he arrived at Miami in 1984, he was succeeding Howard Schnellenberger, a coach who had just won the national championship.

Only Schnellenberger was not leaving on the toe of a boot. Schnellenberger was joining the ill-starred World Football League. Johnson went 52-9 and won his own national championship.

Does Jimmy Johnson worry that he’s leading off with a rookie quarterback?

He grins. “I’m a rookie myself,” he says, chuckling. “We’ll learn together.”

But won’t it take three years to make a rookie effective?

Johnson smothers a smile. “If it does, we’ve got (the time).”

Jimmy Johnson never had a self-doubt in his life. He won’t prowl the sideline in matching polyester and a hat with a broom in it, a la Landry. He doesn’t plan to do anything like Landry. His teams will be physical, not finesse. They won’t be America’s team, they will be Jimmy Johnson’s. America will have to get its own.

You get the feeling Jimmy Johnson doesn’t feel sorry for himself, replacing Tom Landry. You get the feeling he feels sorry for the guy who has to replace Jimmy Johnson some day.