Troy Aikman

Aikman signed with Oklahoma but lasted only two years there. As a sophomore he broke his ankle, and his replacement, Jamelle Holieway, went on to lead the Sooners to the national championship. Aikman could see his future in Norman: on the sideline, watching, with a baseball cap on his head, a clipboard in hand. He also had trouble finding a home with the Sooners off the field. He lived in an athletic dormitory in which criminal mischief seemed ever present: drug use, gunfire, sexual assaults. Switzer would later be forced to resign because of such problems. Life in that dorm was so dangerous, in fact, that Aikman wouldn't let his girlfriend visit him there. In the spring of his sophomore year he got smart and decided to transfer. "I went to Barry's office to talk to him about leaving, and he was almost enthusiastic," Aikman says. "It wasn't like he was trying to talk me out of it. He kind of got excited. I don't think he wanted me to leave, but I think deep down, Barry felt bad that I was being wasted."

Aikman confessed to having no alternative school in mind, so Switzer opened a desk drawer and pulled out a sheet of paper listing the top college passing teams from the year before. He fired off names, and Aikman accepted or rejected them as possibilities. Switzer then picked up the phone and called some coaches--Terry Donahue, then at UCLA, among them. "I had to sell Terry on him," Switzer says. "He'd never heard of Troy. I said, 'Terry, this is a unique situation. Troy's a starter, a great kid and a great player. He will be your quarterback, and he will be drafted in the first round. He will play pro football.' Then I told Terry that if he didn't take him, Troy would end up at Stanford. I knew Terry didn't want that."

Aikman was ineligible to play for UCLA in 1986, but over the following two seasons he led the Bruins to a 20-4 record, their best in years. By then he was everybody's choice to be the first player taken in the '89 draft, a pick that belonged to Dallas. As it happened, the Bruins accepted an invitation to play Arkansas in the Cotton Bowl, and they practiced at Texas Stadium. Among the regular visitors to those workouts were Cowboys coach Tom Landry, president and general manager Tex Schramm, and personnel director Gil Brandt. They stood on the sideline and watched, unnerving Aikman.

"I did not practice well," he says, "and Coach Donahue was worried about me. He'd pull me aside and say, 'Are you going to be all right?' Then one morning before I was leaving for practice, Gil Brandt calls me in my hotel room. 'Troy,' he says, 'I just want to let you know that if you throw seven interceptions in this game, it doesn't matter--you're our guy.' "

UCLA won the game by a couple of touchdowns, and Aikman was the offensive MVP. But a week later, before the Hula Bowl for college all-stars, a Cowboys scout summoned Aikman to his Honolulu hotel room. Aikman took a seat, and the man said, "O.K., where'd you go to college?"

"Then he starts going through all this background stuff, and I'm thinking he should know this," Aikman says. "So finally, after about 10 minutes, I say, 'Can I ask you something? Gil Brandt told me I was going to be the Number 1 pick. I'm not holding Dallas to that, but you come up to me, and you act like you don't even know who I am. I'm just curious. What's going on?' The guy looked at me and said, 'Sometimes Gil says things he shouldn't.'"

Aikman didn't know what to make of the meeting. The more he thought about it, the more uncertain he became. Then, in late February, oilman Jerry Jones bought the Cowboys from Bum Bright and announced that Jimmy Johnson would replace Landry as head coach. The news made Aikman even more anxious. He had never heard of Jones, but he did know Johnson. While coaching at Oklahoma State, Johnson had tried to recruit Aikman. A few years later, after Johnson had taken over at Miami, he had talked to Aikman about transferring there. Having already rejected Johnson twice, Aikman wondered if the coach would want him a third time.

Aikman's fears were for naught. The Cowboys ended up signing him a few days before the draft, making what proved to be one of their most significant acquisitions since they drafted Heisman Trophy winner Roger Staubach 25 years earlier.

"I'D BEEN in Dallas a year when Troy got here," Irvin says. "I remember the first day he showed up. We were throwing and catching, and he had this zip on the ball. And his ball was easy to catch. It had all the speed in the world, and it would come to you and hover. It would actually hover. The ball seemed to be saying, 'O.K., Michael, you can catch me now.' I've never seen anybody throw a better ball."

That first year Aikman lived in an apartment complex just like anybody else. And he got around like anybody else. He went to Billy Bob's Texas and other honky-tonks for country music. He ate at restaurants without being pestered. He could drink a beer without a crowd watching to see how he held the bottle. But the Cowboys weren't winning, either. Aikman went 0-11 as a starter his rookie year and was the lowest-rated quarterback in the league. He missed five games with a broken finger, and when he came back, he suffered a concussion. Adding to his torment was an unsympathetic, often hostile press. POPGUN, one headline called him. ACHE-MAN, said another.