Cowboys Banking on Smith

Emmitt Smith, twice involved in contentious holdouts with the Dallas Cowboys, received a $48-million, eight-year contract Monday, including an NFL-record $15-million signing bonus.

“I learned from the last two times,” Cowboy owner Jerry Jones said. “I made some mistakes. And I learned from them.”

The contract will run until Smith is 35, past retirement age for many running backs but not, perhaps, for the man who this year could become the youngest to reach 10,000 yards. Smith, who was in the final year of his contract, has rushed for 8,956 yards in six seasons.

“It’s going to be a test to see how I feel in another eight years,” said Smith, the NFL’s leading rusher four times. “I think I still have a lot . . . left in me.”

Smith’s new agent, Eugene Parker, met secretly with Jones and his son, Stephen, to complete the agreement.

“I didn’t want anything to leak out,” Smith said. “And that was hard for me to do because it’s hard for me to shut my mouth.”

The eight-year deal theoretically ends any chance of another holdout. Smith refused to come to training camp his rookie year and settled just before the first game. He missed the first two games of the 1993 season, which the Cowboys lost, before Jones realized he had miscalculated his running back’s resolve and settled.

“No deal is ever easy,” Smith said. “Things went wrong the first two times. Egos got involved. But Jerry did the right thing this time.

“I didn’t want the whole elephant. I wanted to leave room for Jerry to bring in other players.”

Jones would not say how he manipulated the salary cap to make the deal. But he said he does not anticipate the problems he had last year, when he had to restructure Deion Sanders’ $35-million deal because the NFL objected.

Jones will get about a $500,000 rebate from the NFL on the salaries of suspended Michael Irvin and Shante Carver that he can use in the deal. Smith will count about $3 million against the salary cap this year.

“This is going to cost us so much I may have to stop construction on my house,” Jones said.

Smith is the latest Cowboy star to receive a big contract. Quarterback Troy Aikman signed an eight-year deal worth $50 million that included an $11-million bonus. Last September, Sanders signed a seven-year contract worth $35 million, including a bonus of $13 million.