My introduction to the world of the NFL, and NFL media, arrived in 1989. I was working for the Dallas Morning News covering high school sports when news broke that the Cowboys were going to fire the legendary Tom Landry.
Sources had told our NFL writers that new Cowboys owner Jerry Jones would be having dinner with Jimmy Johnson, and that Johnson could be named coach as early as the next day.
Our staff mobilized. Each of us staked out a high-end restaurant in the Dallas area. Ivan Maisel, our great college football writer, found Jones and Johnson mid-margarita. The next morning, Cowboys fans, many of whom couldn't imagine Landry being fired, and certainly couldn't imagine Landry being fired by a mouthy Arkansan who had once failed to make money running a chain of pizza parlors, awoke to a front-page photo of Jones and Johnson smiling for our cameras at their dinner table.
Jones' popularity couldn't have been lower at that moment, and Johnson was tainted by association. Cowboys fans loved Landry and were suspicious of change, even change that would bring in a coach who won a national title.
In light of today's NFL new cycles, those sentiments feel hopelessly old-fashioned.
Landry had coached the Cowboys for 29 seasons. He had not won a Super Bowl in 12 seasons. He hadn't taken a team to the Super Bowl in 11 seasons. The Cowboys were on a run of three straight losing seasons, and finished 3-13 in 1998.
Minnesotans loved Bud Grant for all of the right reasons. In Grant's last seven seasons as Vikings coach, he won exactly one playoff game and reached the conference title game zero times.
Can you imagine any coach surviving such performances today?