In light of Zeke’s nude ESPN The Magazine’s Body Issue cover reveal this week (I think our staff photographer, Elizabeth Lavin, shot his body better), I took a look back at some Cowboy cover highlights over the years. Here are my top picks.
1. Roger Staubach, Sports Illustrated, December 2, 1963
On November 22, 1963, LIFE recalled 7 million copies of the magazine with Roger Staubach on the cover, replacing his image with that of President John F. Kennedy. But Sports Illustrated was able to go ahead with their planned portrait of the midshipman on their December cover, in anticipation of the Army-Navy game. Here’s an excerpt from Dan Jenkins’ cover feature about “the midshipman who speaks not but does everything”:
Off the field, Roger Staubach is a soft-eyed, high-cheekboned, brown-haired, handsome, devout midshipman who attends Mass almost every morning. His smile is honest and he is unmilitarily gracious. He looks something like a young movie star whose name you cannot quite remember. His father is a salesman, and his mother keeps a scrap-book. Back home there is the usual childhood sweetheart, Marinna Hobbler, who is a nurse. A product of Cincinnati’s highly developed Catholic Youth Organization, Staubach grew up in organized sport. “From the time he was able to sit up,” says his mother, “he was an active child.” Staubach’s roots are still in Cincinnati, and he looks forward to the Christmas holidays, when he can relax and play touch football with his old high school teammates.
Wayne Hardin says Staubach will be a career Navy man. If so, he has just made the decision this year. After the Army game of 1962 he was asked about pro football. “It depends on how much I like the Navy,” he said then. “I’ll make up my mind in the next two years. I would like to try it.”
2. Michael Irvin, Out, August 2011
Several years before Cyd Zeigler pitched a story about straight allies in sports to Out magazine, Michael Irvin told the journalist and founder of Outsports.com about his gay brother, Vaughn, who died of stomach cancer at age 49 in 2006. When Out greenlit the cover story, Zeigler approached Grant Hill, Sean Avery, and Drew Roenhaus, all of whom passed for scheduling or other reasons. Then he remembered Irvin, who immediately said yes. Here’s Cyd’s recollection of why Irvin agreed to do the interview, and how much encouragement was required to get him to take off his pants (none):
In that first conversation about the piece he said it was time to talk about his gay brother, Vaughn. The moment he realized his brother was gay was an impactful moment that dominated much of his life for the next 20 years. It was something he wanted to talk about openly for the first time; And it was in Vaughn’s memory that Michael wanted to fully, openly endorse gay equality and lay out the welcome mat for gay players in the NFL to come out.
In the pages of Out magazine this month, Michael does just that. At one point talking to him about reconciling his religion with his dedication to full equality for gay people I struggled to fight back tears. Rarely have I witnessed anyone, gay or straight, speaking so eloquently and so strongly in support of gay marriage. This wasn’t just a fleeting thought for Michael, this was something to which he’d given deep thought and decided to commit his energy and good will.
The Playmaker also agreed to a photo shoot in Los Angeles in late May. I didn’t know quite what to expect. Out magazine is known for their incredibly beautiful photography often of half-naked men. I told Aaron that Michael would most likely want something stylish and sophisticated.
When Michael walked into the stylist’s realm at the shoot he quickly ripped off his shirt, dropped his pants and went right for an old vintage leather football helmet and shoulder pads. Once the camera was turned on him he tightened his abs and pulled his pants down to show the top of his boxer-briefs. Feeling protective of Michael I pulled him aside and assured him he didn’t have to do anything he didn’t want to do.
“This is what I want,” Michael said. “Let’s get people talking about this issue.”
3. Troy Aikman, GQ, September 1993
Last Thanksgiving, just after Troy Aikman’s 50th birthday, Clay Skipper sat down with the former quarterback to talk about whether or not Dak Prescott can take the Cows to the Super Bowl for the first time since Aikman left. But the conversation started with a remembrance of just how much pain the star was in during his 1993 GQ cover shoot:
Two days after his 50th birthday, former Dallas Cowboys quarterback Troy Aikman pulls out of a Starbucks in an upscale shopping mall in Dallas’s Highland Park, heads towards today’s Cowboys practice, and talks about his GQ cover shoot from 1993. It was the summer after he’d won his first Super Bowl, and shortly after he suffered the back injury that helped cause him career-ending pain.
“When we were doing the shoot, I couldn’t move,” he says, “I was in back spasms. They propped me up against the wall.”
Aikman’s dressed head-to-toe in black athletic gear, his statuesque 6-foot-4 frame entirely too massive for the driver’s seat of his dark gray Range Rover. On the 23-year-old GQ cover, Aikman wears a boxy, double-breasted suit with a comically big pocket square. You can’t see it looking at the photo, but Aikman was in a full sweat because of the pain, nearly 20 miles from where we are now, at the Cowboys’ old practice home in Valley Ranch.
“When I got done, I couldn’t get the clothes off because I was in such bad spasms,” says Aikman, gearing the Range towards the Dallas Cowboys’ new facility in Frisco, Texas.
Troy Aikman sat at his locker after the shoot ended, clothes still on, thinking, Shit, I’m going to spend the night in here. He was the reigning Super Bowl MVP at twenty-six; he was the hero that had delivered America’s Team to their first championship in fifteen years; he was, as GQ dubbed him on its cover, “God’s Quarterback.” And he couldn’t get his pants off.
“Every time I see that cover,” Aikman says now, “I think about it.”
4. Emmitt Smith, Sports Illustrated, July 1996
John Ed Bradley’s cover feature, “Emmitt Unplugged,” opens with a scene of Emmitt crunching numbers, figuring out how long it will take him to pass Walter Payton’s rushing record. At the time, he had gained about 9,000 yards since he had joined the Cowboys in 1990. The intent of the cover, showing Emmitt lounging in a pool, was to be ironic. Turns out, it took Emmitt 6 years—he broke Payton’s record on October 27, 2002.
Back in 1990, his rookie year, Emmitt had to be the first one off the ground after he was tackled. He was that impatient. He would push everybody off and race back to the huddle to see if Dallas quarterback Troy Aikman would let him run the ball again. The defense couldn’t understand why Emmitt was in such a hurry, unless he had an attitude problem. But it wasn’t that, and it wasn’t about being young, either. “I just had this energy,” Emmitt says. “I had this…enthusiasm.” Then one day after a game, his father, Emmitt Smith Jr., pulled him aside and gave him a look. Emmitt’s dad doesn’t talk much, and sometimes when he gives you a look, it’s like he’s giving you a smack in the chops. He wondered why Emmitt couldn’t be patient and wait on the ground like a normal person. “Son,” he said, “you know how much energy you waste trying to be the first one up like that?”
Emmitt thought about it for a minute. “You’re right,” he finally said. And the next week, when he was tackled, he lay there and looked at the world and admired it and felt altogether grateful for his place in it.
“You hurt, Emmitt?” came a voice. It was a guy on the other team. Everybody had gotten off Emmitt by then, and he was still lying there, just as his father had told him to.
5. Dez Bryant, Rolling Stone, August 2015
Controversial Cowboys receiver Dez Bryant opened up to Paul Solotaroff about his challenging childhood for the 2015 Rolling Stone cover story: his grandmother on crack, his mother selling crack, peanut butter and potato chips for dinner. And how he’s still fighting for what he deserves.
So why, sitting across from me at a plush hotel in Dallas, is he cartwheeling between outrage and wracking sobs, vowing to “show those motherfuckers who did me dirty”? Why is he so wounded by the bargaining machinations of reptilian Cowboys owner Jerry Jones, who had refused to make him a five-year offer at the going rate for franchise wide receivers? And why is he spitting fire at the man who gave him refuge after he’d been booted out of Oklahoma State football in 2009, calling David Wells, a black businessman in Dallas and a longtime trusted proxy of the Cowboys, a “thief and a liar” who Bryant says ripped him off?
The answer is, it’s football, which is as brutal off the field as anything you’ve ever seen on Sunday. Betrayal, race politics and a purported Walmart tape that may or may not depict a lurid crime: This one’s the Super Bowl of player/owner battles, a midnight game of chicken between two bent-for-leather drivers, with the Cowboys’ season hanging on the brink.
Worst Cover Curse Ever
And then there’s Michael Mooney’s September 2016 cover story for Texas Monthly. Romo broke his back in the next game after the issue hit newsstands and was out the rest of the season.
In his last meeting with the media before training camp started, in August, Romo said he felt good. “I’m throwing the ball as well as I ever have,” he explained. Twice he said he was trying to “perfect” his “craft.”
Maybe that means that this year will be the year he gets that extra yard. The year he’s able to score on that final possession. Maybe this is the year Romo ends the final play of the final game a winner. We all remember that night in Seattle, or that day against the Giants, or the loss to the Broncos, or the pain of the Green Bay game. But we hope, because we have Tony Romo.
Maybe this is the year.
