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College. Fully half of the Dallas first-round draft picks over the years have been All-Pros.
For years the Cowboys appeared to have as much personality as a flat Texas landscape. Too computerized, too efficient, too heartless. Their presence on the football field was as chilling as a ranch-house visit from a cold-eyed Dallas banker holding an overdue mortgage. But just as the years tamed the ostentation of Dallas wealth, so has success slowly transformed the Cowboy image. The coldness has become cool professionalism, with a soupgon of eccentricity. The Cowboys have become the glamour team of pro football, home to the dazzling rookie with the accent on the second syllable, Dorsett. In the old days, nicknaming a Dal las player consisted of calling Defensive Tackle Robert Lilly "Bob." Now the Cowboys boast "Manster" Linebacker Randy White (for each of the things he is half of) and the bookend defensive ends, Ed "Too Tall" Jones and Harvey "Too Mean" Martin. Then there is Tom "Hollywood" Henderson, who, during the offseason, dated one of the Pointer Sisters.
Even Landry has loosened somewhat.
He has begun to pass an idle word or two with his players, and—to the wonderment of sportscasters sitting boggled before their monitors—was recently seen to smile. Two plays ahead in his head or not, he now walks over to pat a player on the back after a big play, occasionally. He is no Red Miller, to be sure. Once, when former Dallas Quarterback and Prankster Don Meredith had his teammates laughing during practice, Landry's perspective on such doings was firmly spelled out: "Gentlemen, nothing funny ever happens on the football field."
Landry's wit, dry and ironic, is saved for sportswriters and for speaking engagements that help the Cowboys' thoroughgoing public relations campaign. The same sense of detail that marks computerized scouting can be found in every phase of the Cowboy operation. The N.F.L.'s largest radio network, 133 stations, beams Cowboy games from Key West, Fla., to Thousand Oaks, Calif. A weekly newspaper published by the club has a lavish freebie list—including college trainers, so that prospects hanging around waiting for the whirlpool will have the Cowboys to read about.
Aiything the rest of the world can do, Dallas can do bigger and better is a local creed that pervades everything from the palatial mansions of Highland Park and the outrageously expensive bagatelles of Nei-man-Marcus to the ample, amply displayed busts of the famous Cowboy cheerleaders. Other teams have cheerleaders, but none has chosen them with so much care as Dallas—and then put them in uniforms with so little cloth. Nearly 700 women try out each fall for the 36 low-neckline, high-kicking jobs. While the Chosen Ones receive little pay ($15 per game), they get more air time than many a television star as cameramen focus in when anything short of a touchdown is happening onfield.