The Fallen Stars : Cowboys Used to Be Untouchable, but Off-Season Troubles May Mean the Party’s Over in Dallas

IRVING, Texas —  Seats please. Seats please. The bus departs Valley Ranch in five minutes.

Mr. Tom Landry, are you on or off? Dry your eyes and make up your mind. On? Good. Just a quick reminder. This is Jerry Jones’ bus and he has only one rule. No hats.

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the America’s Team tour.

For the next couple of hours, we will be visiting the stuff of legends, the stomping ground of giants, points of inspiration for the Super Bowl champion Dallas Cowboys.

A party house. A strip joint. And a sports bar.

We’re glad you chose to join us on what we consider the ultimate modern-day football excursion, an exclusive look inside the huddle of the team of the decade.

We will see topless women and bottomless drinks. We will travel past roped-off lounges and blackened windows. We have a chance to buy cigars in bathrooms.

What, you wanted to see some football? What do think this is, Green Bay?

Since winning their third Super Bowl in four years in January, the Cowboys have been beset with very different sorts of fourth-down plays.

It began with star receiver Michael Irvin’s indictment for possession of cocaine and marijuana. It has continued with informants’ confessions about secret parties and swinging times. Every day, it seems, somebody is taking an Exacto knife to another piece of the star.

The Cowboys say people are picking on them because they are the Cowboys.

Critics say the Cowboys consider themselves untouchable because they are the Cowboys.

No matter who eventually wins, something has been lost.

“Most people know that one or five players don’t make up an entire organization,” said Bill White, pastor of the 2,400-member First Baptist Church of Oak Cliff in suburban Dallas. “But with all that has happened, with the repetition of the problems . . . the Cowboys’ luster has been diminished.”

White, a professed Cowboy fan, said he will still give sermons using sports to illustrate the strength of the human spirit.

But because of the Cowboys’ troubles, he said, “I will now have to add a disclaimer.”

Up there, on the right, is our first stop.

Yeah, that two-story, beige-brick home with the vertical picture window. Located only a 440-yard dash from the Cowboy complex.

Check out the address--115 Dorsett Drive. Directly between Meredith and Howley streets.

A lot of tradition here. And, according to neighbors, a lot of flesh.

Known by players as “the white house,” this is the place that several Cowboys rented for six months ending last spring.

Dennis Pedini, a Cowboy sycophant turned paid informant, told KXAS-TV in Fort Worth that some players used the house for drug and sex parties.

The neighbors say they don’t know anything about drugs, but they certainly have noticed the women.

“At first I just started seeing Cowboys coming in and out of that house for an hour or so after practices,” said Greg Canty, 48, a single computer salesman who lives next door. “Michael Irvin and [former Cowboy] Alvin Harper were the ones I recognized.

“Then came the women. All sorts of women, coming in and out. None of them were wearing wedding rings, either, because that’s the first thing I look for.”

Canty said he would occasionally talk to the women and wondered what they did inside the house with the players. Then one day, he spoke to another neighbor.

“She was telling me that she would see the women through the window, running around in their birthday suits,” Canty said. “I was wondering where I had to stand to get that view.”

Canty said he never complained to authorities, because, with the exception of the occasional limousine parked in the street, the Cowboys were never a problem.

“Actually, I was kind of hoping they would be loud, just once, so I could have had an excuse to knock on the door,” he said. “I would have told them, either quiet down . . . or let me join you.”

Within Canty’s remark rests the crux of the defense of an organization whose neck has stiffened with each accusation.

Critics are firing at the Cowboys . . . because they can’t be the Cowboys.

“It’s part of the human psyche,” Coach Barry Switzer said this week. “Somebody is on top, everybody wants to knock them down.

“Maybe it’s my own paranoia, but I get the feeling right now that the world just doesn’t like us.”

Whatever, since maverick owner Jerry Jones brashly fired Coach Jimmy Johnson two years ago and took control of every aspect of the organization, the world has been watching.

Here is some of what it has seen:

--In October of 1994, star tackle Erik Williams drove his Mercedes-Benz into a freeway wall at 3 a.m. after a postgame victory party. He pleaded no contest to drunk driving and sat out the rest of the season because of a knee injury.

--Shortly before the start of the 1995 season, backup receiver Cory Fleming was arrested at 2:30 a.m. and later pleaded guilty to drunk driving.

The Dallas Morning News reports that Fleming, a free agent who will not be re-signed by the Cowboys, is facing a suspension next season for violations of the league’s drug-abuse policy.

--Midway through the 1995 season, defensive lineman Leon Lett and cornerback Clayton Holmes were suspended by the league after testing positive for drugs.

--On March 4, less than two months after starring in the Cowboys’ Super Bowl victory over the Pittsburgh Steelers, Irvin was discovered in a local hotel room with former teammate Alfredo Roberts, two topless dancers, and allegedly drugs, drug paraphernalia and sex toys.

Irvin was not immediately arrested but was later charged after missing an appointment with the grand jury. The two dancers--Angela Beck and Jennipher Nabwangu--were also charged. Their trial is scheduled June 24.

Last week, Irvin was the “star” of a hidden camera expose by KXAS that reportedly showed him possessing cocaine and discussing the drug.

The Cowboys cannot speak directly about the Irvin situation because of a court-imposed gag order, but they are counting on him to return next season.

Some insiders say that a trial is the best possible scenario, because it would take only one Cowboy fan to block a conviction.

Not that the Cowboys are losing sleep over it.

The player putting in the longest hours on the practice field at wide receiver this spring? Perhaps you’ve heard of Deion Sanders.

Jerry Jones took a long sip of his iced tea and smiled.

“The strength and following of our organization can withstand the frailty of one individual,” he said.

If you’ll look to your left, you’ll see our next stop, that sleek stone structure that looks like a fancy hotel.

And it would be, if fancy hotels were filled with women who like to undress and then sit on men’s laps.

This is the Men’s Club, a strip joint so hip it has its own swimming pool and gift shop. And where else can you get handcuffs for $8?

You used to be able to find Cowboys in here daily, sometimes even between practices. They can relax in lush, high-backed chairs and watch topless women dance. They can retire to a private section in the back, which includes telephones and fax machines.

This was where the two topless dancers reportedly worked before they were arrested with Irvin, who has a wife and two young children. This is where Irvin was spotted, in a full-length mink coat, hours before that party.

This is where you could also find the Cowboys’ coach.

“I’ve been in there, sure, it’s a great place,” Switzer said. “I’ve taken Jerry [Jones] in there, too. They have great food.”

But even Switzer has his limits.

“I draw the line at table dances,” he said.

Pastor Bill White was attending a recent meeting of other local preachers when somebody passed him a piece of paper.

On it was a photocopy of a pair of handcuffs. Written above the handcuffs were the words, “Dallas Cowboy Super Bowl rings.”

How did it get like this? How did what was once a national treasure so quickly become a local joke?

John Niland, a six-time Pro Bowl guard from 1966 to ‘74, said the Cowboys were always wild.

But back then, he said, everybody found reasons to look the other way.

“Everybody talks about the great old Cowboys, well, if you did a [urine] test on every one of our guys, we couldn’t field a team,” Niland said. “I remember driving home one night and I was drunk and a cop stopped me . . . but he found out who I was and he let me go. That happened all the time with players.”

So why the recent Cowboy troubles?

Several Dallas-area observers agreed it could be summed up in one word: bidness.

That’s the Texas pronunciation of business, which Jones conducts like a linebacker, suing the league when it won’t support his new ideas, fiddling with the rules to sign marquee players, generally giving his players the impression that anything goes.

“Since Jerry Jones has taken over the team, he has made it clear that it’s all about ‘bidness,’ ” said Chris Cowan, co-director of the National Value Center in Denton. “People get the sense that he looks at what his team does off the field and says, ‘That’s not ‘bidness,’ that’s not real, the heck with it, we’ll just go make a deal with Pepsi.”

Added Cowan: “The Cowboys are losing the spirit. People see the organization and think, ‘Where is the sense of decency?’ ”

So the police stop looking the other way. The media look closer. And fans hover near the players, hoping not to get an autograph, but maybe to cause a front-page fight.

Jones took another sip of iced tea and smiled again.

“I’m through feeling compelled to sell and defend,” he said. “If I could control one thing my players do off the field, then I’ve got a higher calling.”

The last stop on our tour is the Cowboys Sports Cafe, a small sports bar near the team’s training complex, owned by some former players.

The bar and pool tables, frequented by today’s players, are on the far side of a partition, hidden from the main section of the restaurant.

The windows are blackened so you can see out, but not in. A sign on the door warns that if you are caught taking pictures, your film will be confiscated. And absolutely no autographs.

Just a nice neighborhood bar.

It was here recently that Irvin engaged in an alleged shoving match with another patron, who is suing him. According to the Dallas Morning News, the spot has been mentioned in police reports involving public intoxication and brawls.

On this evening, there are several Cowboys at the two pool tables. They scowl beneath the smoke.

Outside, four giggling women jump out of cars and snap quick photos. They hesitate, as if deciding whether to enter. A young thug appears in the doorway. They run to their cars and speed away.

But there is good news. The owner of the most statistically dominating team in footballcited the Dallas Cowboys’ latest number.

“We had 81 guys take the drug test at our recent mini-camp,” Jerry Jones said. “And we were 0 for 81.”

He did not say whether it was a record.