The last time the Dallas Cowboys won a Super Bowl was 30 years ago in 1995. By then, head coach Jimmy Johnson was gone, and so were his strict rules, so players ran amok.
A perfect example of this is the Cowboys' infamous White House, where players would go to party.
Former Cowboys great and Hall of Famer Michael Irvin talked about what took place in the “White House.”
Irvin was the “president,” and he laughingly recalls the infamous house in the Netflix Cowboys docuseries America’s Team: The Gambler and His Cowboys, which premieres today.
“We was like, ‘Man, we spend a lot of money for these hotels, all of these women,’ ” Irvin recalls. “So then we said, ‘Let’s do a house.’ ”
There were not only women but drugs and plenty of alcohol as well, and while Irvin took his fill of all the dobouchy, a lot of his teammates missed Johnson because, unlike head coach Barry Switzer, who took over for Johnson that '95 season, he knew how to keep players like Irvin in line.
Former safety James Washington recalls about Switzer: “A lot of guys liked him because now the guys felt like they had freedom. Barry came into that locker room, the dynamic, the accountability, the work ethic — that had changed.”
Switzer didn’t think the players off the off-field activities were none of his business.
He explained his philosophy when it came to his players.
“Those guys live on the edge,” the now-87-year-old says in the series. “[They’re] supposed to be adult men, married, most of ‘em. You know, really it was none of our business; they’re adults.”
Neither Troy Aikman nor Emmitt Smith liked that philosophy, and they’ve expressed how they felt about Switzer’s handling of the team over the years. Especially, Aikman, who was not a fan of Switzer.
“It was a stark contrast to anything that had happened in the first five years,” Aikman recalls, while Johnson was head coach. “I just remember thinking things are different, going forward.”