THE SOAP OPERA THAT IS... : DALLAS : Off-Field Scandal Shatters Image That Once Made the Cowboys America’s Team

The plush blue carpet is worn and dirty, and the white and beige star dominating the middle of the locker room, which has housed the best team in professional football three of the last four years, is no longer first-class in appearance.

The first game that counts is now but days away, but instead of the charged-up atmosphere of anticipation in this room, there is dread. Michael Irvin has driven off, banned for five weeks from using the facility because of his hellish off-season, and down the hall the training room is crowded with the wounded--Emmitt Smith, Jay Novacek and Mark Tuinei.

Outside, rain is falling hard, and those who in recent days have predicted the roof caving in on the Super Bowl champions, have been given their sign.

“You know, everybody has got kind of a negative tone about where we’re at right now,” says quarterback Troy Aikman, who has been backed into his locker by yet another assault of doom and gloom questions. “Yeah, we’re not as talented as we were when we finished last year, but we’re still pretty good.

“Now, I’m not naive to where we’re at. It is going to be a struggle, especially early in the season without Michael. Call me stupid, but I just believe we’re going to find a way to get it done.”

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There have always been problems for the Cowboys: Lance Rentzel and Rafael Septien pleaded guilty to indecency with minors, Bob Hayes and Thomas “Hollywood” Henderson had flings with drugs, and “North Dallas Forty” looked mighty close to being the real thing. But always the glitz and glamour of “America’s Team” won out.

Until now.

“I’m too emotionally involved,” says Tex Schramm, the retired general manager of the Cowboys, who crafted the image that separated Dallas from all other teams.

“The best thing, really, would be for me to no longer live here. It’s just so difficult to see a lot of things happening. . . . It’s obviously disappointing to me because the Cowboys’ name, their image, mean so much to so many people.”

Schramm, who left with Coach Tom Landry after Jerry Jones bought the team in 1989, has read the reports about drunken driving, prostitution and drugs, and is now sitting next to his wife, who is reading aloud passages from “Hell-Bent,” a book purporting to tell “the crazy truth about the ‘win or else’ Cowboys.”

There are passages on rumors that Aikman is gay. There are pages and pages detailing the conflict between “the Switzer camp” and “the Aikman camp.” The question is raised: Did Aikman throw both games with Washington a year ago to benefit good friend Norv Turner, the coach of the Redskins, and embarrass Cowboy Coach Barry Switzer?

Then there is the constant bickering between owner Jones and the NFL. There have been rebel deals struck by Jones with Nike and Pepsi, thereby threatening the way the league does business. The Cowboy organization is just not the Cowboy organization Schramm says.

“I can’t believe all this stuff,” he says with a groan. “It’s not just winning, it’s winning with class, style. That was the Cowboys. It’s like the New York Yankees, the Celtics. Something special. Now all I see are the results, and it’s sad to me. It’s more like the Raiders. From what I’m told, when the Cowboys go out in the city now, it’s not the same reception they used to get. Everyone loved the Cowboys--mothers, grandmothers.”

That is how they came to be known as America’s Team. The cameramen for NFL Films, who travel throughout the league, documenting a team’s performance each week, began reporting back to their producers about the growing number of Cowboy fans across the land.

After the 1979 season, Schramm said, NFL Films produced a highlight film for the team and called it, “America’s Team.” The name stuck.

“You can’t knock them for winning three out of four Super Bowls,” Schramm says. “They think that’s what it’s all about, just win, baby. But that’s never been America’s Team. Maybe it is in some people’s minds, but the Cowboys were set aside as something special.

“I still have a box and go to the games, but you know, it really wouldn’t be that hard now not to go.”

Schramm says most anyone can look at the Cowboys and understand where all this nonsense begins, but no, he says, he will have no comment regarding Jerry Jones.

“You could see this building,” he says about the rash of off-field incidents. “It couldn’t go on much longer without something happening. I don’t think anyone anywhere is shocked or even surprised. They are the defending Super Bowl champs and they are losing fans.”

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While his teammates began practice for Monday night’s game against Chicago, Irvin began community service work, the result of his drug trial earlier this summer.

Defensive lineman Shante Carver is also serving a suspension because of his own drug problems.

A year ago, defensive lineman Leon Lett, cornerback Clayton Holmes and wide receiver Cory Fleming were punished for problems.

The Cowboys signed linebacker Broderick Thomas, who twice in the last year was arrested for unlawfully carrying a weapon and for drunk driving.

Offensive lineman Erik Williams has been arrested for drunk driving and for sexual assault on a topless dancer.

The “white house,” a home rented by several players for parties, received “Hard Copy” treatment in Dallas.

Hells bells, Deion Sanders was warned orally, then in writing and then arrested for catching bass in a lake on off-limits airport property.

“You’ve made us drunks and jerks,” Nate Newton told the Chicago Tribune earlier this summer.

Newton, who has been arrested for drunk driving, has not been happy with the media’s persistence in documenting the Cowboys’ foibles. He urged reporters this week to concentrate on the Texas Rangers.

“Everybody disrespects us and tries to harass us,” he said.

And so it goes for the Cowboys, who find themselves defending their image instead of accepting applause for a job well done.

“I don’t expect anybody to have pity on us,” Aikman says. “Because we’re not going to get it, especially the way some people think our image has been tarnished.”

Randy Galloway, columnist for the Dallas Morning News, has been pounding the Cowboys.

“In the name of winning, Jones continually goes out of his way to be a sugar daddy for the Valley Ranch rockheads,” he wrote.

And later, in another epistle: “On a football field, Jones owns the best team. But in the arena of public perception, it’s already the fourth quarter and the champs are looking like chumps.”

Switzer shakes his head. He does that a lot. He cannot understand all the fuss, but then some of this is downright mild, compared to his tumultuous days in Norman when he coached at the University of Oklahoma.

“I still believe we are the team to beat,” Switzer says. “The season is like running a marathon. Nobody cares who leads after six or seven games. It’s where you are at the end that matters. I believe we will be in New Orleans in January.”

And then it’s Switzer being Switzer: “I will be at the Super Bowl. I just hope the team will be there with me.”

No one is laughing here. The locker room has the kind of tension normally reserved for clubs accustomed to defeat. Nerves are frayed, and there are doubts about achieving the kind of success that has made them feel invincible in the past.

“I know it was only the preseason and we didn’t do what we wanted, but I think it’s still going to be a while before we get it going,” said offensive tackle Tuinei, a 14-year veteran.

Jokes aside, even Switzer admits, “We have a lot of ifs.”

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The Cowboys’ starting left tackle will be playing on a sore knee. Aikman, who wears a Jay Novacek baseball cap, will not have his tight end security blanket on third down because Novacek has been unable to overcome a back injury. The Cowboys, since they began winning in 1991, have never had to play without Irvin.

Aikman threw for more than 61% of his passing yardage last season to either Novacek or Irvin. Emmitt Smith will start against the Bears, but he has been sitting out because of a sore knee.

Sanders will play offense and defense because of cornerback and wide receiver deficiencies. There is no worthy backup along the offensive line, and in recent visits to the Super Bowl the Cowboys have always had to go to a sixth offensive lineman because of injury to a starter. Defensive end Charles Haley, when not threatening to retire, is complaining of a bad back.

“What we’ve done has kind of leveled the playing field for everybody,” Aikman said. “We’re kind of backed into a corner now. I would hope it would end after five games when Michael returns, but I don’t think it will because we’re so thin.”

In living up to the team’s starry emblem, the Cowboys have handed all the money under their salary cap to Aikman, Smith, Sanders and Irvin. Everyone else is driving a Ford Escort as primary transportation.

“The system now is designed to keep you from being a consistent winner,” Schramm says. “That’s what they are going to be fighting. They will have no depth, and it will begin to catch up with them.”

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Balderdash, says Jones, who is sitting in his office in his coaching shorts. Yes, his coaching shorts.

If Schramm built the image of the Cowboys, Jones gets credit for taking this team into the stratosphere. The great players are his. The Jimmy Johnson-Barry Switzer legacy is all his. The break with fedora tradition and the out-of-control behavior by some of his athletes is all his.

“One of the things I often hear is that the system is about to take its toll more so than it has in the past two years,” Jones says. “I don’t think so. We have replaced the players that left here with better players.

“And why can’t the strength of a team run horizontal? Why does it have to go north-south? We lose Irvin and Novacek, but who says someone else at another position won’t rise up and carry the day?”

Be serious, he says, the Cowboys still have better players than teams that have to start rookies. Now, you want to talk image? OK, he says, that’s a problem.

“I’m extremely sensitive to that,” he says. “I think about image every day, and I’m aware of where some have said it all starts.”

That would be right at the top, but how do you argue with overwhelming success?

“Listen, this team is absent of smugness and absent of the kind of cockiness which you would associate with a team that has won three of the last four world championships,” Jones says. “Some people argue that teams that win consistently begin to treat things like it’s old hat. You know, the challenge is gone.

“But I don’t think anyone will argue: This team has been challenged.”

Jones was rehearsing his Lombardi Trophy acceptance speech, of course, because all troublesome chatter aside, how can the Cowboys falter?

Victories might come hard initially, but it would take a total collapse to finish anywhere else besides first in the sad-sack NFC East. Games in Chicago, Philadelphia and Buffalo during Irvin’s absence will be trying, but walkovers against Washington, Arizona, the New York Giants and New England Patriots at season’s end should pave the way to the playoffs.

Still, these are the Cowboys, the team that has become accustomed arrogance in victory. And now they might be in for defeat.

“We’ve been humbled by what has happened the past few months,” Aikman says, and a fourth Super Bowl in five years might be too much to expect.

In Jerry Jones’ world, nothing is impossible. It explains his reasoning for taking on the NFL and its long-time formula for spreading the wealth. It explains his initial investment in the Cowboys and Texas Stadium. It explains the hiring of Switzer.

“It’s like the saying we have on the football field,” Jones says. “Form your base--get a good spread on your feet. Well, I think we have the base here that can take a hit. We’ve shown that the last few years. This isn’t the first year we’ve been hit by free agency. It’s not the first turmoil. How about Jimmy leaving and Switzer coming in?

“We’ve got that solid base, and while by no means is it a given that we’ll be the NFC’s representative in the Super Bowl, to discount us as a has-been or a team that’s unraveling, is over-reaching.”

* NFC PREVIEW: A team-by-team look at the challengers to the Cowboys’ NFC and Super Bowl titles. C9