SPORTS ICONS:
Nolan Ryan and TomLandry are the stuff of Texas legend.
Of all the terms tossed around in the language of sports, “icon” is shared too easily and often to maintain its importance or the gravitas those so bestowed deserve.
Few can truly measure up to the idea of representing much more than themselves, of creating animage that inspires ideas and feelings, even transports to a different time.
Fewer still bring those sorts of irrepressible feelings, even now, decades later, as does a glance at Tom Landry.
The picture of Landry, fedora perfectly in place, suit immaculate, his expression stoic with not quite a frown but certainly not a smile while at work, brings thoughts not just of a Hall of Fame coaching career with the Dallas Cowboys.
That image represents a time when the NFL went froma Sunday distraction to a national obsession, when Dallas escaped the stigma left by an assassination to become a city viewed for success and perhaps excess, and the Cowboys were recognized by their own brash declaration of being “America’s Team.”
Just a thought of Landry, standing as straight as a flagpole and as serious as the bomber pilot he once was, brings back that time when the late afternoon sun shined oddly through the Texas Stadium roof, when lineman rose and crouched in unison before plays and Pat Summerall told us what would be covered by “60Minutes” after the game.
For 29 years, Landry was the stone face of the franchise.
“To me, he was invincible, a rock in your life,” legendary former Cowboys quarterback Roger Staubach told the Dallas Morning News after Landry died of leukemia in 2015. “He always represented so many good things.”
To much of the sports world, Landry represented the era when football began its dominance and the Cowboys’ place in that rise.
To the Cowboys and Dallas, he represented values that were developed in Mission and stayed with him throughout his career and beyond.
Landry was born in Mission in 1924. He was a quarterback, fullback and defensive back for the undefeated Mission Eagles in 1941. He enrolled at the University of Texas, but also enlisted in the Army Reserve and was called up in 1943. He flew 30missions over Europe, including one in which he ran out of fuel and crash-landed, walking away with his crew uninjured.
He returned to the University of Texas after thewar, andwould star for the Longhorns’ 1949 Orange Bowl champions, meet Alicia Wiggs, get married and graduate with a degree in business.
Landry played for one season with the New York Yankees of the All-America Conference, a league that quickly disbanded, sending him to the New York Giants in a move that would not only help him to stardom as a defensive back but set his legendary coaching career in motion.
Lacking great speed, Landry learned to out-think opponents and found he loved the challenge.
“Even when I was still playing offense, I felt defense was the most challenging part of the game,” Landry wrote in his autobiography. “The offense has its plays diagrammed for it and knows ahead of time exactly what it has to do. On the other hand, the defense must constantly anticipate and react. On defense you have to accept the fact that you’re going to give the other guy the first shot. Trying to figure out a way to take some of that advantage away from him was always the most intriguing part of the game for me.”
By the final two seasons of his career, Landry was aplayer-coach, running the Giants’ defense before becoming the Giants defensive coordinator. Giants coach Jim Lee Howell called Landry “the best coach in the NFL” after the Giants held Jim Brown and the Cleveland Browns scoreless in a playoff game, even with Vince Lombardi on his staff running the offense.
While Landry worked as a Giants coach, former Rams executive Tex Schramm, then working in New York for CBS, took notice. He recommended Landry to prospective Cowboys owners Clint Murchison Jr. and Bedford-Wynne.
Landry was signed on Dec. 27, 1959, roughly a month before the Cowboys would become an NFL franchise, becoming at 35 years old the youngest coach in the NFL. He chose the Cowboys over the Oilers because he was concerned that the Oilers and AFL would suffer the same fate as the Yankees, but also because Schramm had promised him complete control of personnel decisions.
In Landry’s first season, the Cowboys were winless. In his first four seasons, they went 13-38-3. Murchison, however, firmly believed in his coach and the future of the Cowboys, signing Landry to a 10-year extension with an option to buy five percent of the franchise. Two seasons later, the Cowboys reached the NFL Championship game against the Packers. A season later, theywere back, again losing to the Packers in the Ice Bowl.
Along the way, Landry had taken the then-revolutionary 4-3 defense he devised to counter Paul Brown’s spread offense in Cleveland and created the Flex Defense to counter Lombardi’s “Run to Daylight” philosophy. He introduced motion offenses, changed pass coverage responsibilities, brought back the shotgun, and popularized situational substitutions.
By 1970, the Cowboys were in the Super Bowl, losing to the Baltimore Colts and taking on the derisive moniker “Next Year’s Champions.”
They won the Super Bowl the following season.
Landry’s stolid, stoic style was intentional, something he had trained himself to maintain as a strategy.
“Leadership is a matter of having people look at you and gain confidence, seeing how you react,” he said. “If you’re in control, they’re in control.”
Landry led the Cowboys to the Super Bowl five times, winning two. He won 270 games, fourthmost in league history. He produced 20 consecutive winning seasons.
After he retired, fired by Jerry Jones on Feb. 25, 1989, Landry was inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame in his first year of eligibility. He said he never missed coaching, returning to Texas Stadium only twice, rarely watching a full game. Devoutly religious, he spoke at religious events, especially for the Fellowship of Christian Athletes.
Landry’s tombstone includes a Cowboys star and a carving of a fedora, the hat he began wearing when he thought it would complete the wardrobe of an insurance salesman as he expected to be and became central to an image as a Texas icon.
As his legend grew, roads and highways, schools and parks from Mission to Dallas were named after him.
Such is how it is with icons. It is about more than accomplishments. It is about all they represent.
“He was a unique person,” Schramm told the Morning News. “He had somuch class and character.
“People ask why the Cowboys got the name ‘America’s Team.’ People have that feeling about the Cowboys, for one thing, because they could see Tom Landry standing there with his hat and everything he stood for.”