SUPER BOWL XXVII : He Keeps It Under His Hat : Landry: If former Dallas coach has any resentment about his treatment by the Cowboys, he’s not letting on.

Taking part in an NFL “legends” flag football game not long ago, Cliff Harris got a little bit of a shock.

One of the coaches for the event was Tom Landry. A loose, joking Tom Landry.

“I had a chance to sit down and visit with him,” said Harris, who played nine years at safety for Landry’s Dallas Cowboys during the team’s glory days in the 1970s, “and he was so much more relaxed than I’d ever seen him, happier than I’d ever seen him.

“I mean, he smiled and laughed. He didn’t do a lot of that before.”

After being fired as Cowboy coach when Jerry Jones purchased the team in February 1989, Landry, 68, appears to have settled comfortably into retirement.

He has written a best-selling autobiography, formed an investment company with his son, Tom Jr., and lent his name and time to various civic and charitable projects.

His schedule is often filled with speaking engagements and tee times.

“I think he has handled (being out of coaching) great, and I wouldn’t expect anything else from him,” said former Cowboy publicist Doug Todd, who spent 18 years working with Landry and has written some post-retirement speeches for him. “He took inventory and said, ‘OK, I’m going off on another avenue of life.’ I doubt he’s seen a half-dozen games.”

Landry has not attended a Cowboy home game since his dismissal, and he said he’s seen only a handful of games on television.

“I travel a lot, particularly on weekends, so I really don’t have a chance to see a lot of football,” he said. “I do it when I can, but I follow my former (assistant) coaches more than anybody else--Mike Ditka, Dan Reeves, Gene Stallings. Those guys.”

Asked if the Cowboys’ return to the Super Bowl this week after a 14-year absence has stirred any feelings, Landry laughed and said: “No. The good Lord just changed me. He put me in a different area. I’m interested in (football), but I just don’t have time to watch it very much.”

As coach of the Cowboys for 29 years, Landry helped build the organization from a winless expansion franchise to one that became known as “America’s Team.”

From 1971 to ‘79, the Cowboys made five Super Bowl appearances, winning twice. Staring impassively, wearing his omnipresent hat, Landry became one of several larger-than-life symbols of the franchise’s success.

In the mid-’80s, however, the Cowboys began to slide. The team was losing money and coming off a 3-13 season when Dallas businessman H.R. (Bum) Bright, who bought the club in 1984 from original owner Clint Murchison Jr., sold it to Jones, then an obscure businessman from Little Rock.

Jones immediately brought in college buddy Jimmy Johnson to replace Landry.

Although such a move was sure to touch off Pearl Harbor-style headlines in Dallas, Jones didn’t do himself any favors by committing a series of public relations blunders, including going to dinner with Johnson at Landry’s favorite Mexican restaurant in Dallas the night before the sale was announced. A photo of Jones and Johnson at their table appeared in the Dallas Morning News the next day.

Even now, with Jones and Johnson riding high, the Landry issue refuses to go away, largely because of the absence of his name from the franchise’s “Ring of Honor.”

According to Harris and others, Jones has made a standing offer to Landry to be included in the “Ring of Honor,” but has not received a response.

The matter has become so touchy that two Cowboy stars from the past, linebacker Lee Roy Jordan and quarterback Roger Staubach, have discussed serving as mediators between Jones and Landry.

“I think Roger and I might have to get in the middle of it and see if we can get it resolved,” said Jordan, who operates lumber and paper businesses in Texas and Alabama. “ . . . I think we’ll see if we can push it through this year, at least get them to talk about it.”

Harris said Landry looks small by not accepting Jones’ offer of a spot in the “Ring of Honor,” a move that would put Landry’s name on the wall below the Texas Stadium press box.

“By not doing something, I think it hurts Coach Landry’s image,” said Harris, who is in the insurance business in Dallas. “One of the great things about life is the ability, when you’re hurt, to make amends with your enemies. I think Coach Landry certainly has got that within him. But I think people in Dallas right now see a weakness on his part, because Jerry Jones did make the offer.”

If such a notion has gotten to Landry, he doesn’t show it.

In talking about the “Ring of Honor,” he puts the onus on Jones.

“That (issue) is so misunderstood,” he said. “I’ve never talked to anybody in the Cowboy organization. My son talked to someone out there who wanted us to consider it back in 1990. And I just . . . well, I didn’t feel like it was the proper time.

“(Jones and Johnson) were changing all of our personnel, all of our front office, everything. It was in turmoil, and I just didn’t want to be part of it at that point. I haven’t talked to anybody since then (about the ‘Ring of Honor’) except reporters.”

Does seeing Jones in the middle of the Super Bowl hoopla cause any hard feelings on Landry’s part?

“No, that doesn’t bother me at all,” he said. “People think I have strong feelings because of the way things worked out, but for me it was . . . well, I just stepped out a year before I was going to step out anyway, so it wasn’t that big a deal. I haven’t spent a lot of time thinking about it, really.”

If nothing else, the Super Bowl should revive Landry’s career as a television pitchman.

In two potato chip commercials, due to air at the start and finish of Michael Jackson’s halftime performance, Landry challenges Ditka and six NFL players, including Howie Long and Eric Dickerson of the Raiders, to a bet that will--through the magic of makeup--cause them to lose their hair.

“The main requirement in casting this part,” said Lisa Kovitz, spokeswoman for Frito Lay, “was getting a coach or an athlete who was preferably hairless. I know Tom Landry hasn’t been coaching for a couple of years. But being with the Cowboys when they were ‘America’s Team’ and wearing that hat make him a recognizable figure.

“Plus, he’s a great straight man.”

Although Landry will be in Los Angeles today to speak at a breakfast sponsored by Athletes in Action, the Ohio-based organization that uses athletics to promote Christian beliefs, he won’t stay for Sunday’s game. He will leave town immediately to continue a vacation in which he and his wife, Alicia, will, he said, “just travel around.”

They expect to watch the game on TV. Just don’t ask where.

“I’m not sure,” he said, laughing. “Wherever we end up stopping.”