Judgment Day : With Egos and Reputation on the Line, Barry the Bozo and Jimmy the Genius Will Get Together Sunday in the Most-Anticipated NFL Game of the Year

By T.J. SIMERS

Oct. 25, 1996 12 AM PT

TIMES STAFF WRITER

DALLAS —

Observers have noted tremendous progress by Dallas Cowboy Coach Barry Switzer, nicknamed “Valley Ranch Wallpaper” by a local newspaper columnist and radio talk-show host.

A year ago, they say, when an offensive play was called in practice, there were times when he was almost run over because he didn’t understand what was being called.

This year he knows where to stand.

MIAMI-- In the Miami Dolphins’ locker room this week, the team has a dummy--any resemblance to Switzer is in the mind of the beholder--dressed in Cowboy gear, and actually wearing No. 8 to look like Dallas quarterback Troy Aikman. Press a button on the dummy’s tummy and it speaks unintelligibly--and any similarity to the way Switzer talks is sheer coincidence.

Each week a new display is constructed around the Dolphins’ bulletin board featuring the next opponent, and although everything requires Coach Jimmy Johnson’s approval, there is a telling editorial cartoon tacked to the board just to the left of the dummy.

“I think we overcame unbelievable adversity and a tremendous liability,” the pictured Cowboy player in the cartoon says. “But enough about Barry Switzer.”

Take a poll of football fans across the country and that’s probably how it goes: Dallas at Miami on Sunday with Barry the Bozo, the buffoon, matched against Jimmy the Genius, the best coach in the game today.

“I’m probably the perpetrator of that more than anybody,” Switzer says. And why? “I’m honest and candid.”

Honest and candid about being Barry the Bozo, the buffoon?

“It’s a perception some people have, my critics write, but I don’t pay any attention to that,” Switzer says.

“I hate to have to do this, to defend myself on that, but you know, I’ve coached for 35 to 40 years, been around a lot of great assistant coaches and learned a lot and won a lot of football games as head coach--more than anyone who coached the game since or during that time. Obviously, I had something to do with it at Oklahoma. They haven’t won a championship since and they haven’t finished second since.”

That still doesn’t explain why the general consensus is that Switzer has no clue.

“I have no idea,” he says. “It’s really irrelevant.”

General managers, scouts and assistant coaches throughout the NFL do little to debunk the clown image worn so well by Switzer, but every last one of them admits--in some cases with pangs of jealousy--that somehow, Switzer has been able to win championships.

Switzer may be the last one to show up each day at the Cowboys’ Valley Ranch practice headquarters, may be the first to leave, and some wonder if he knows all his players’ names, beyond the first 22.

In last week’s game against Atlanta, the Cowboys lost starting left tackle Mark Tuinei, replaced him with George Hegamin, and then almost lost quarterback Troy Aikman to an injury because Hegamin missed a block. A few minutes later, owner Jerry Jones was on the sideline, tapping Switzer on the shoulder.

Imagine Jerry Jones tapping Jimmy Johnson on the shoulder on the sideline during a game?

“Why should I be upset about him asking me about a player?” Switzer says. “It’s Jerry’s team. Jerry’s stadium.”

The image takes another beating. Switzer watches videotape almost constantly, but he is remembered most for going for it on fourth down in Cowboy territory in Philadelphia, and everyone’s laughing at Barry.

“He took us to a Super Bowl,” Cowboy linebacker Darrin Smith said. “If it was that easy, a lot of buffoons would be doing it. He’s able to come to us and look at film and ask us why we’re doing this or that. It’s not how people perceive him.”

After last year’s Super Bowl, however, Aikman solidified Switzer’s shaky reputation by saying he had no idea what Switzer did as a coach. But then Aikman had bonded with Johnson, and Johnson ran the businesslike practices Aikman favors. Switzer doesn’t even make Charles Haley go to practice unless Haley’s in the mood.

“Say anything you want, but I don’t know how you can explain away those championships,” said Ernie Zampese, hired by Johnson to run the Cowboys’ offense, and staying on in the same capacity with Switzer. “And I’m telling you, this guy is something real special, just a great guy, and I love working for him.”

“Barry’s an easy punching bag,” says Babe Laufenberg, a former Cowboy quarterback for Johnson who now helps broadcast Dallas games.

And then Laufenberg takes off the gloves:

“I don’t think Barry knows the professional game the way some coaches do. . . . I’ve seen more uneven performances under Barry than you ever saw with Jimmy. . . .

“I think the success he had in college was under a whole different set of circumstances. He only had to coach two games--Nebraska and a bowl game. Other than that, all he had to do was tell the guys what time the game started and he beats Iowa State by 55. That just doesn’t happen in the NFL. Last week Atlanta played their butts off against the Cowboys.”

During his 16 years as coach at Oklahoma, Switzer’s teams won three national championships, 12 Big Eight titles and 13 bowl games while compiling an overall record of 157-29-4.

Five times his Oklahoma Sooners tangled with Jimmy Johnson’s Oklahoma State bunch. Five times Switzer’s group was tougher.

“When he’s had the better talent, he’s won, and when I’ve had the better talent, I’ve won,” says Switzer, who lost three in a row to Johnson’s Miami Hurricanes, including a 1987 national championship encounter. “If anyone’s claiming to be the better coach on either side, that person’s dreaming.”

The way Emmitt Smith has his former coach pegged, “He wants to win this game very, very badly, so badly he has probably been dreaming since he left here. And if he wins, I can only imagine what is going to be said. Only imagine it.”

A victory, shown over and over on ESPN’s “SportsCenter,” would stamp Johnson the better coach than Switzer, who is blessed in this game with the better players. Johnson won’t say it now, but ask anyone who knows Johnson, and this one’s personal.

He doesn’t like Switzer, although he was once an aspiring defensive lineman at Arkansas who looked up to Switzer, a graduate assistant coach at the time. Switzer took Jimmy’s team, Johnson’s associates say, and did the worst possible thing Johnson could have imagined: He won with it.

While working as a commentator on TV before taking the Dolphin job, Johnson criticized Switzer for leaving his team on Saturday to watch his son play football.

Switzer’s response at the time: “My family is important to me. It’s well documented football is more important to Jimmy than his family.”

The feud had taken root.

Johnson on Switzer this week: “I think Barry’s done a good job in Dallas. The situation he was put under, taking over a team that had won two straight Super Bowls, and holding the team together, Barry Switzer did a good job.”

If his teeth had been clenched any tighter, his smoothed-down hair might have begun to buckle.

Switzer on Johnson: “We’re cordial, but that’s it.”

“Put Jimmy and Barry in the same room and see who comes out alive,” says Skip Bayless, author of the controversial “Hellbent,” a book on the Cowboys. “Jimmy might sucker-punch Barry or try to talk his way out, but I guarantee you this, Barry would kill him.

“Barry’s just a tough SOB and if you talk to people who knew both of them when they were first starting, they would tell you Barry was much better with the Xs and O’s than Jimmy.

“Now, Barry’s half-crazy and not always on our planet, but he was taught by Frank Broyles at Arkansas not to take credit. Barry will never take the credit from his assistant coaches. He doesn’t want to set himself aside as a hypocrite because those are the people he cares the most about.

“Unlike Jimmy, Barry’s not an actor. Barry would never set himself up as a genius in an interview. In this media-crazed age of always wanting to credit the coach, Jimmy is the master of the subtle line dropped in a postgame press conference. He’ll tell you he saw something in films preparing him for this moment and relating it to the big play in the game to draw attention to himself.”

Johnson went 1-15 in his first year with the Cowboys, and he didn’t appear so smart. As Laufenberg said, “From personal experience, having played for him, he was not a very good professional football coach.”

But Johnson, unlike Switzer these days, dedicates every hour to football with an intensity that wears out most people around him. He not only made himself into a very good pro coach, which was the unanimous opinion of general managers, assistant coaches and scouts contacted for this week’s matchup, but his way of playing defense in the NFL has now been adopted by most every team.

“I’ve met a lot of great, famous people in my time, but I have never been as overwhelmed as when I met Jimmy Johnson,” tackle Ron Heller said in an interview earlier this year--before he was cut by Johnson.

Four of the five players who chose to not participate in the Dolphins’ voluntary off-season program are no longer with the team. Report late for a meeting--five seconds late--and Johnson makes the offender wait outside while he conducts business. Take the wrong angle on coverage, as safety Gene Atkins did a few weeks ago, and the next morning the name tag over your locker has been removed.

“If you’re getting the job done, you’ll be here,” said wide receiver Randal Hill, who played at the University of Miami for Johnson as well as for the Dolphins now. “If you’re not getting the job done, you’ll disappear like Houdini--only you won’t come back.”

Before the Cowboys won the Super Bowl last year, Switzer told people he might buy a boat and name it Four Rings. Johnson had already named his boat Three Rings for the two Super Bowls and the national championship he won at Miami. Switzer now has more rings than the best coach in the game.

“Barry’s impulsive, over the edge and there’s nothing calculated about him,” Bayless says. “He’s kind of like a player at heart, a guy who has never grown up, and the players love that. That’s why they play their guts out for him. They might love him because he’s easy, but they love him.

“Jimmy’s dead opposite in everything. Jimmy couldn’t tell you five offensive plays his team runs, but he is a defensive guy and a very shrewd personnel man, great at sizing up talent and evaluating the opposition each week.”

Switzer might have to be advised late in the week which team is next on the Cowboys’ schedule.

Check it out. Tom Landry went 0-11-1 in his first year as the Cowboys’ coach, Johnson 1-15, and Barry the buffoon 13-5.

“Say you have someone coming into this country for the first time and they don’t know anything about football and they say, ‘What about this Coach Barry Switzer?’ ” Laufenberg says.

“ ‘Well, the guy’s a moron, the guy’s an idiot, the guy can’t coach. However, his teams have done well. They lost in the NFC championship game his first year against the 49ers, who went on to crush the AFC in the Super Bowl, and then Switzer’s team won the Super Bowl the next year.’

“That guy would look at you, and say, ‘Maybe you’re the idiot.’ ”

In a three-year span, Switzer’s Sooners went 35-2--losing both games to Johnson’s Miami teams.

Before beating Switzer a third time and for a national championship, Johnson watched as Switzer was inducted into the Orange Bowl Hall of Fame, and at that time, he said, “Sometimes I feel like a wrestler.

“I’m not talking about one of the stars, like the Sheik or one of the Road Warriors. I’m talking about the guy who is always introduced as the other guy. He goes from town to town, and nobody knows his record or much about him.”

Now the genius and the buffoon are matched, the winner gaining the right to be known as the greatest--until they meet again.

And no matter who wins, somehow Jerry Jones will take credit for it.

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

Tale of the Tape

A look at how the coaching resumes of Barry Switzer and Jimmy Johnson compare:

Switzer

Age: 59

Years as college coach: 16

College victories: 157

College winning pct.: .837

National championships: 3

Years as NFL coach: 3