Tag: dynasty

A key figure in the Cowboys’ dynasty days of the mid-1990s has passed away. The death of Larry Lacewell, the team’s longtime director of college and pro scouting, was announced Wednesday.

It’s impossible to tell the full story of the Cowboys without including Lacewell, as he was inextricably tied to three of the biggest names in team history and present for multiple moments that defined the franchise.

When Lacewell joined the Cowboys in 1992 as the director of college scouting, he was already something of an icon in the collegiate coaching ranks. He started as a graduate assistant at Alabama under Paul “Bear” Bryant. Over the next thirty years, he rose through the ranks with stops at Wichita State, Iowa State, and Oklahoma, where he worked on the same coaching staff as Jimmy Johnson and Barry Switzer.

The Sooners won two national titles during Lacewell’s tenure as assistant head coach. Years later, Lacewell would convince Johnson to take the job as head football coach at the University of Miami.

After serving as the head coach at Arkansas State for 11 successful seasons, Lacewell went on to spend another two at Tennessee as defensive coordinator.

An Arkansas native, Lacewell was also friends with Cowboys owner Jerry Jones when he was hired in 1992. The team won Super Bowl XXVII that same season and then repeated as champs the following year.

A few weeks later, Lacewell was standing next to Jones when the tipsy owner gave the ill-fated toast that triggered the end of Johnson’s time as Cowboys coach.

He was also the one who gave his old friend Johnson a heads-up the next morning that the axe was about to fall.

Lacewell had pro scouting duties added to his job description in 1994 as he was reunited with Switzer, now the Cowboys’ new coach. It could have been a disaster; as told in Joe Nick Patoski’s book The Dallas Cowboys: The Outrageous History of the Biggest, Loudest, Most Hated, Best Loved Football Team in America, Lacewell had resigned from his post in Norman back in 1978 when he discovered that Switzer- a friend of over 20 years- was having an affair with his wife. (Johnson, coincidentally, had been the best man at Lacewell’s wedding.)

Lacewell and Switzer insisted it was ancient history, though, and that their football bond took precedence. It was Lacewell’s personal recommendation to Jones, in fact, that helped seal Switzer’s hiring in Dallas.

The Cowboys returned to the Super Bowl in January of 1995 and brought home the Lombardi Trophy, but the team had already begun a descent from its juggernaut status. Lacewell remained with the franchise until early 2005, when he stepped down during the Bill Parcells era and moved into a talent consultant role for the team.

But his place in football history is secure- both in Dallas as one of the architects of the Cowboys dynasty and in Jonesboro as the winningest coach in Arkansas State history. He will be remembered as a legend who crossed paths with some of the all-time greats of the sport at both levels. In Tuscaloosa, for example, the road leading to the stadium named for Bear Bryant… is Larry Lacewell Lane.

Larry Lacewell was 85.

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