Here is a portion of an interview with Stauback:
TAE: Increasingly, professional sports is becoming tarnished by scandal. Athletes are routinely alleged to have committed violent crimes. More than 10 percent of the players in the last Super Bowl had criminal histories. What’s causing all this?
STAUBACH: Money can corrupt or it can be a vehicle for good things. In the old days, players were paid well, but not like now. When you’re young, it’s easy to get caught up on this fast-track lifestyle. Who a person associates with matters a great deal, too. When an athlete is making a lot of money, he has to be careful who he surrounds himself with.
When I played, the Cowboys had their share of problems, just as they do today. But back then Tom Landry dealt with each of them. Discipline is so much more difficult now. In business, you’ve got to have leadership, and the ability to discipline people. The same goes for sports. If a coach doesn’t do it, he gets in trouble. Landry did it.
TAE: He was the sort of man who didn’t have any qualms about cracking down.
STAUBACH: If you were late for practice, it didn’t matter if your excuse was an automobile accident. Landry’s view was, “You should have left earlier.” No exceptions. Players were dealt with swiftly—either cut or traded. Landry tried to balance coaching and discipline. Some coaches don’t know how to do that.
TAE: When athletes make it big today, they seem to bring the culture of their old lifestyles with them. Their buddies from the neighborhood become part of their entourage. Years ago, athletes tried to put that life behind them once they became successful.
STAUBACH: You’re right. It’s those associations that cause a lot of this.
TAE: The Cowboys have recently had more than their share of controversies. The joke a year or two ago was, “How do the Cowboys spend their first week of training camp? Answer: studying their Miranda rights.” How do you change that?
STAUBACH: Jerry Jones has done a great thing by trying to use former NFL players such as Calvin Hill and Paul Warfield—guys who have a great deal of personal integrity and stature—to influence younger players.
TAE: Do you think the NFL should suspend players for off-the-field behavior, which it did for the very first time last season?
STAUBACH: Absolutely. They should do more than that, but I’m not running the NFL. I think there should be random testing for drugs, for example, because drugs lead to many other problems. A player is tested when he comes into the league, but once he’s there it never happens unless a guy behaves totally off the wall. But some of these reforms are being prevented by the Players’ Association.
