The Dallas Cowboys are The Team when it comes to merchandising when it comes to cheerleaders when it comes to glamour. In its charmed remains, one was forced to ask a singular question: how in the world had it come to this? The great Dallas Cowboys of the 1990s - the organisation of pride and honour and success the organisation where one team-mate would never dare hurt another the organisation that took over American sport - was officially dead and buried. Truth be told, this was more than just a fight. Was McIver OK? Was he in critical condition? Would he live? None of the lingering Cowboys knew the extent of the damage. An ambulance arrived, and McIver was whisked away. The Cowboys' medical staffers stormed the room, past a dumbstruck Irvin, and immediately attended to McIver. What had just happened? Had Michael Irvin - king of the Cowboys - stabbed a man in the neck? Was this who the Dallas Cowboys had become? Who Michael Irvin had become? "And we're all thinking the same thing - 'Oh, shit.'"įor a moment - as brief as a cough - there was silence. "Blood immediately shoots all over the room," says Smith. The tip of the scissors ripped into McIver's skin, just above his collarbone and inches from the carotid artery. The motion was neither smooth nor slick, but jagged, like a saw cutting felt. He grabbed a pair of scissors, whipped back his right arm and slashed McIver across the neck. In a final blow to any hopes of diplomacy, McIver cocked his right fist and popped Irvin in the mouth. "I'm the littlest guy in the room," says Kevin Smith, "so I just yell, 'Leon, do something!'" Leon Lett, the enormous defensive lineman, tried separating the combatants to no avail. McIver shoved even harder, then grabbed Irvin and tossed him towards a wall. McIver stood and shoved Irvin in the chest. Sensing trouble, the barber backed away from McIver's head. You're no fuckin' rookie! He can't tell you what to do!" "Yo E," he said to McIver, "don't you dare get out of that chair. Standing nearby was Erik Williams, McIver's fellow lineman. Either I get cut right now, or nobody does." "Tell his pathetic ass to wait his fuckin' turn. "Vinny, get this motherfucker out of the chair," Irvin barked at the barber. Was Everett McIver talking to Irvin? Was he really talking to Irvin? Like. "Seniority! Seniority! Punk, get the fuck out of my chair!" McIver, sitting in the chair, didn't budge. So here Irvin was, moody, agitated and wanting an immediate trim. When Gene Upshaw visited Dallas training camp in May 1993 to explain an unpopular contractual agreement, Irvin greeted the NFL union chief first by screaming obscenities, then by pulling down his pants and flashing his exposed derrière toward Upshaw. In 1991, Irvin allegedly shattered the dental plate and split the lower lip of a referee in a charity basketball game. The man known as "The Playmaker" had made a hobby of breaking rules and laws. A superstar wide receiver known as the heart and soul of the three-time Super Bowl champions, Irvin was equally famous for his crazed antics. "He was a dude in need of a haircut who waited his turn properly." Vinny wrapped a plastic bib around McIver's neck and picked up his buzzers. "Let me say this - Everett did nothing wrong," says Kevin Smith, the veteran cornerback. After defensive back Charlie Williams finished receiving his cut, Everett McIver, an offensive lineman, jumped into the chair. The Cowboys, after all, were known as "America's Team" - the darlings of the NFL, who walked and played with uncommon swagger and arrogance. On this day, a handful of Cowboys lingered, passing the time by talking about the upcoming season and the local bars and the "hoochies" hanging around camp. Vinny would set up a chair, break out the scissors and buzzers and chop away, one refrigerator-sized head after another. It was one of many luxuries afforded Cowboy players - free trims. As was customary, that morning a Dallas-based barber named Vinny had driven the two and a half hours to camp. The date was 29 July 1998 - a seemingly normal afternoon in room 212 of the Cowboys' training camp dormitory at Midwestern State University in Wichita Falls, Texas. Yet nothing - absolutely nothing - matches the Dallas Cowboys of the 1990s.
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