Cowboys book...excerpt....Irvin was such a douche

Michael Irvin knew he was screwed.

There, dangling in his right hand, was a pair of silver scissors, bits of shredded brown skin coating the tips. There, clutching his own throat, was Everett McIver, a 6-foot, 5-inch, 318-pound hulk of a man, blood oozing from the 2-inch gash in his neck. There, standing to the side, were teammates Erik Williams, Leon Lett and Kevin Smith, slack-jawed at what they had just seen.

It was finally over. Everything was over. The Super Bowls. The Pro Bowls. The endorsements. The adulation. The dynasty.

Damn — the dynasty.


How 'bout them Cowboys? Want to hear more about the big antics in Big D during their championship run in the 1990s? Jeff Pearlman sat down with FOXSports.com to discuss his new book, Boys Will Be Boys: The Glory Days and Party Nights of the Dallas Cowboys Dynasty. The greatest wide receiver in the history of the Dallas Cowboys — a man who had won three Super Bowls; who had appeared in five Pro Bowls; whose dazzling play and sparkling personality had earned him a devoted legion of followers — knew he would be going to prison for a long time. Two years if he was lucky. Twenty years, maximum.

And yet, there Michael Irvin stood on July 29, 1998, staring down a new low. The scissors. The skin. The blood. The gagging teammate. That morning a Dallas-based barber named Vinny had made the 2½-hour drive to Midwestern State University in Wichita Falls, Texas, where the team held its training camp. He set up a chair inside a first-floor room in the Cowboys' dormitory, broke out the scissors and buzzers and chopped away, one refrigerator-sized head after another.

After a defensive back named Charlie Williams finished receiving his cut, McIver jumped into the chair. It was his turn.

"Seniority!" Irvin barked.

McIver didn't budge.

"Seniority!" Irvin screamed again. "Seniority! Seniority! Punk, get the f--- out of my chair!"

"Man," said McIver, "I'm almost done. Just gimme another few minutes."

Was Everett McIver talking to Irvin? Was he really talking to Irvin? Like ... that?

"Vinny, get this motherf----- out of the chair," Irvin ordered the barber. "Tell his sorry ass to wait his f-----' turn. Either I get a cut right now, or nobody does."

Standing nearby was Erik Williams, McIver's fellow lineman. "Yo E," he said to McIver, "don't you dare get out of that chair. You're no f-----' rookie! He can't tell you what to do!"

Sensing trouble, the barber backed away from McIver's head. McIver stood and shoved Irvin in the chest. Irvin shoved back. McIver shoved even harder, then grabbed Irvin and tossed him toward a wall. "I'm the littlest guy in the room," says Kevin Smith, "So I just yell, 'Leon, do something!'" Lett, the enormous defensive linemen, tried separating the combatants. It was no use. "The whole scene was crazy," says Smith. "I couldn't believe what I was seeing. I mean, we were on the same team."

In a final blow to harmony, McIver cocked his right fist and popped Irvin in the mouth. "I just lost it," said Irvin. "I mean, my head, I lost it." Irvin grabbed a pair of scissors, whipped back his right arm and slashed McIver across the neck. The motion was neither smooth nor slick, but jagged, like a saw cutting felt. The tip of the scissors ripped into McIver's skin, just above his collarbone and inches from the carotid artery. McIver let loose a horrified scream.

"Blood immediately shoots all over the room," says Smith. "And we're all thinking the same thing — 'Oh, s---.'"

For a moment — as brief as a sneeze — there was silence. Had Michael Irvin, soul of the Cowboys, stabbed a man — his teammate — in the neck? Was this what the once-mighty Dallas Cowboys had become? What the great Michael Irvin had sunk to?

Then — mayhem. The Cowboys' medical staffers stormed the room, past a dumbstruck Irvin, and immediately attended to McIver. As their bloodied teammate was whisked away, none of the lingering Cowboys knew the extent of the damage. Was McIver in critical condition? Would he live?

Either way, every single man in the room knew that this was more than just a fight. The storied Dallas Cowboys of the 1990s — the organization of pride and honor and success; the organization whose players would never dare hurt one another; the organization that dominated professional football — was dead and buried.

How in the world had it come to this?


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