Saturday, January 10, 1998

Barry Switzer's ouster solves half of Cowboys' problems

By Jim Reeves / Knight-Ridder Newspapers

SAN FRANCISCO -- Cowboys owner Jerry Jones finally got around to taking the leftover Christmas trash to the dumpster on Friday at Valley Ranch. It's what got left behind that's still stinking up the place.

Somehow, Jerry can't smell it, even though it's right under his nose. In fact, it is his nose.

Egos are that way, sometimes. Before you know it, they can get a little over-ripe.

Jerry's turned foul and rotten a long time ago.

Accepting head coach Barry Switzer's "resignation" -- a foregone conclusion months ago for anyone with half a brain -- only solves half the Cowboys' problems. Someone still has to lasso Jones and get him back under control before he starts showing up wearing a white satin running suit, just like his idol, Al Davis.

Switzer -- and the questions his uncomfortable situation kept provoking -- was a festering problem Jones realized he had to settle when the head coach was conspicuously absent from the Larry Allen-signing news conference earlier in the week.

Had Jones left his old friend swinging in the wind much longer, the owner would have soon been risking an actual backlash of sympathy for the condemned man, much as the surprised Rangers encountered when they bungled the drawn-out Doug Rader firing in 1985.

We can dismiss the four-year Switzer era with only a few words: Even the good times were bad.

When the Cowboys won their last Super Bowl despite Switzer in 1995, the season was marred by turmoil and the ugly controversy between quarterback Troy Aikman and defensive line coach John Blake, which Barry handled so poorly that Aikman almost quit on the spot.

Instead of celebrating their third NFL championship in four years, Cowboys players heaved a sigh of relief that the season was finally over.

Had Jones been as smart as he thinks he is, he would have ushered Switzer out the door on that questionable high note and brought in a head coach who could have still squeezed another Super Bowl or two out of the extraordinary talent that was still on hand.

Instead, the team skittered out of control and ultimately into this season's disastrous 6-10 abyss.

Jones, who imagines himself to be such a great leader of men that he thought he could will his team to win despite Switzer's obvious apathy, ultimately has to accept the majority of the blame for what has happened to this once great franchise. He hired his couch-potato friend, placed his most precious possession -- next to his family -- in the tater's indifferent hands and watched while Switzer allowed it to fall part.

The fall of the once mighty Cowboys -- cheered by many in the NFL while TV networks weep -- is so monstrous, and was so completely avoidable except for Jones' poor judgment, as to almost be a sin.

Now Jones is in peril of compounding the problem by failing to understand what truly smart owners of professional franchises -- even Johnny-come-latelys like Stars/Rangers boss Tom Hicks -- have been quick to comprehend.

If you want to have a successful team, hire the most astute people you can find to do the jobs they've spent their lives training to do. In this case, Jones needs the smartest football minds he can find as general manager and coach.

In neither case does his mind qualify.

We might as well be spitting into a gale force wind as to think Jones is cunning enough to give up his beloved GM position and be a Clint Murchison-style, hands-off owner. But he should at least have enough sense to leave the coaching, and all that it entails, to the professionals.

"The hands-on, the passion, the involvement, is a plus, not a minus," Jones told Chris Meyers on ESPN's Up Close on Friday. "What we've done over a nine-year period, that's our philosophy. That philosophy, and my hands-on involvement, have contributed to winning three Super Bowls. That's a direction I'm a little hesitant to depart from."

In the past year, however, perhaps because of Switzer's lack of interest, Jones' involvement and overwhelming presence have risen to a new and dangerous level, especially so over the past month.

It's one thing for Jerry to collect a few headlines while joking about coaching himself. It's another for him to actually be making off-season decisions and judgments on assistants and philosophies that should be the sole responsibility of a new head coach.

You think George Seifert, or any self-respecting leader with the credentials to be the Cowboys' next head coach will find the job attractive, if Jones has already left his sticky fingerprints on everything from defensive strategies to who should be the coordinators?

Don't count on it.

If Jones doesn't back off and allow his new head coach the latitude to make the decisions he should be making, he'll wind up with nothing but another mindless bobo on his way to the trash heap.

And we've been there one too many times already.

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(c) 1998, Fort Worth Star-Telegram

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