UNPLEASANT UNDER GLASS

After an exhaustive search of every strip joint in the area, including repeated trips to the Million Dollar Saloon--the most logical place to locate Michael Irvin--he could not be found.

Duty-bound, of course, the search will continue.

But for now--barring any last-minute “Hard Copy” fuzzy-film revelations showing a puff of smoke and Barry Switzer standing on that grassy knoll 34 years ago--it can be reported only that the Cowboys’ Operation Image Make-Over appears to be genuine.

OK, so last week offensive tackle Erik Williams was tagged with a paternity suit, and this week comes news that the team trashed its training camp dorms and next week a Dallas County Grand Jury will decide if guard Nate Newton should be indicted for rape.

But come on, there are two sides to every story, as Newton’s attorney recently told the people of Dallas. “This was a consensual act between two mature adults. This was not something they had not done a 100 times before.”

No comment from Newton’s wife, but for seasoned Dallas football fans, infidelity could very well be considered an image upgrade in comparison to the ‘Boys past indiscretions.

The Cowboys would like everyone to know things are changing here, but for now the good guys are still wearing the black hats because players such as Irvin, Williams and Newton are stars, and the team’s emphasis on redoing its image has been confined to a crackdown on scrubs.

It’s like one of those old-time World War II movies where you know from the outset who is going to get killed off--all the unknown actors. Last month backup tight end Kendell Watkins bought it after visiting the Cowboys Sports Cafe, a restaurant-bar listed as off-limits by the team, and this week it was backup safety Roger Harper’s turn to get ousted for some undisclosed off-the-field transgression.

This is supposed to warn the troops that team management really means business, which is hard to do when everyone is giggling at the very mention of the coach’s name. All this talk about image and Switzer goes to the airport with a gun in his bag, gets caught, sweats bullets while team owner Jerry Jones decides how to discipline him, and then gets tapped with a $75,000 fine.

“From what went on here, the Barry incident had no impact on us,” quarterback Troy Aikman said, and doesn’t that speak volumes about the Cowboy coach. “This is a team that knows it had a good camp, knows the measures that have been taken to clean things up and it’s a team that’s focused.

“Nationally, what this thing does is give credence to the perception that is already out there. That’s what is unfortunate. It gives us a black eye and sets us back further.”

America’s Scoundrels, who had become nightly monologue fodder for Jay Leno and David Letterman, spent the off-season trying to regain their halos. Prompted in part by Aikman’s threat to Jones that he would retire if changes weren’t made, the organization put together a redemption plan that still remains secret in its entirety.

“I’d like to tell you all the things that have been done, but I can’t,” Aikman said. “I have no leg to stand on at this time, but I believe this team is made up of really good people. Right now I’d have a hard time making that argument, but I believe there has been a change.

“After last year I didn’t want to go through my professional career like that. I felt if it was going to continue like that, then I wouldn’t be here today. This is too important to me. I spend too much time in this sport and if we’re not going to go out and be serious about competing, then I don’t want to play.”

Lest there be any confusion, the Cowboys are not competing with Mother Teresa for Nobel Prize accolades. This is not about going to heaven, but rather San Diego for the Super Bowl.

“If you don’t win, how do you ever tell your story?” Jones said. “You give the impression that you have better decision-makers off the field, and then you don’t even get to smell another Super Bowl, well, then you’ve lost all the way around. We have to win.”

So that’s where Operation Image Make-Over begins, about a year ago at this time when the Cowboys realized they couldn’t win without Irvin in the lineup. Irvin’s five-game drug suspension forced the Cowboys to break sluggishly from the gate, and after picking up momentum upon his return, the team went dead after the second drug suspension of defensive lineman Leon Lett.

Lett’s drug suspension was the seventh in two years absorbed by Dallas, and had the Cowboys advanced to the Super Bowl as they had done a year earlier, nothing might have been said. But now the ramifications of getting caught were beginning to take their toll on the field.

“Leon’s suspension came at a time when we had a healthy Troy Aikman, a limited but productive Emmitt Smith, and Michael was coming back, and to be very candid, we were making a run there that looked really good,” Jones said. “But then all of a sudden we had the Leon Lett situation, and that’s when I said ‘hey.’ ”

Someone else might have said “hey” a suspension or two earlier.

“I don’t have a why,” said Jones, who says his fights with the NFL in the past should not be compared to his team’s off-the-field behavior. “I should be criticized for not seeing it and being as sensitive to it earlier.”

Someone else might not have hired Switzer, who has never had his name mentioned in the same sentence as the word discipline--before this.

“I agree that perception is there with Barry,” said Jones, but then he would like to remind everyone that when Switzer was hired in 1994, it did not appear the Cowboys had a roster full of criminals.

“Before Barry got here I think there was one person suspended in the total NFL the two previous years,” Jones said. “In the last two years there have been 68. The rules changed. That’s not an excuse, but when Barry came in the standards changed.”

Switzer, while being asked about many of the injuries his team has suffered this preseason, offered a telling comment that essentially reflects his philosophy during his tenure in Dallas: “We got problems; let’s talk about something else that’s happy.”

Jones, who might be doing more coaching now than Switzer, has taken a lower profile in NFL circles. In compensating for what might be Switzer’s shortcomings, he began last December talking to psychologists, theologians and experts in most every field to try to shine up the Cowboys’ tarnished star.

He hired former Cowboy running back Calvin Hill and his wife to monitor and improve player behavior. He installed surveillance cameras in the players’ dorms at training camp at St. Edward’s University in Austin to keep tabs on his charges, and moved the media workroom from outside the locker room at Valley Ranch to the opposite end of the building to free the Cowboys from up-close scrutiny.

More security has been hired to patrol the team’s practice headquarters in what now appears to have become a season-long episode of “Touched by an Angel.” Jones has even installed new carpet and lockers while having every wall in the building repainted to complete the whitewash, er, make-over.

Despite such precautions, the Cowboys did a lot of damage to their dorms at St. Edward’s, including ripping down the surveillance cameras.

Said Newton of the carnage: “A lot of men and a lot of testosterone is running around. Shirts off, feeling good, beating your chest. They’ve been cooped up for the last five weeks.

“Man against material, that’s all it be. . . . Just having fun.”

Before that joy ride, in an earlier interview when he wasn’t hiding from the media during open locker room time, Irvin said, “I think all the steps Jerry has taken are helping the team.”

As for his role in inspiring many of those changes, Irvin has said, “Those things I won’t address. I think anything I talk about outside of football really distracts this football team, and I’m not willing to distract this football team any more than I have.”

That was Jones’ goal going into this off-season and why he declined NFL offers to take his team overseas for exhibition play. He wanted a traditional training camp and a return to football, but unfortunately he would not stop there.

“These people really can come back and mean something to an unmarried woman of three, i.e.: Let’s get in here, let’s persevere, we all make mistakes,” Jones said. “It’s such a visible thing. Look at Magic Johnson--in a sense he became something more than what he was as a result,” Jones said. “One of the reasons he could do that was because of how visible he was, so when I look at this thing, maybe we have one of the best opportunities in sport to be an example of how to drop down to your knee and show people how things happen to even the big boys, too. And be an example of how to turn that around.”

While everyone ponders the notion of having Irvin, Lett & Co. become the role models of America’s youth, there is no question the Cowboys stand as an example of all that can go wrong.

“We let things get away from us and lost sight of the things that let this franchise be what it is,” Aikman said. “The discipline of the football team was lacking.

“It’s not my place to say how people should live their lives outside of this locker room, but when it has an impact on how we perform on Sundays, then it somewhat becomes my business.”

Aikman, while clearly establishing himself as the team leader, embraced Irvin on his return and is now challenging his teammates to regain the Cowboy tradition of old. Lett, who was suspended for a year, does not become eligible to return until Week 13, and there’s some anxiety in the Dallas locker room as everyone awaits the grand jury’s decision in regard to Newton, but to Aikman the changes that have been made will allow the team to make a quick start.

“This franchise had the respect of everyone at one time,” Aikman said, “and now it’s important for everyone here to leave it, at least as in good a shape as it was, if not better.”