Cowboys legend Schramm dead at 83
July 15, 2003
SportsLine.com wire reports
Tex Schramm, the showboating innovator who helped build the Dallas Cowboys into "America's Team" and was instrumental in the NFL's evolution and popularity, died Tuesday. He was 83.
Schramm's son-in-law, Greg Court, told The Associated Press that Schramm died at his Dallas home. The cause of death wasn't immediately known.
Schramm hired Tom Landry as the Cowboys' first coach and was with the team for the first 29 seasons. He left in 1989, two months after Jerry Jones bought the club and fired Landry, and was elected to the Pro Football Hall of Fame two years later.
Schramm's legacy extends far beyond the Cowboys. Without playing a down, he did as much as anyone to shape today's NFL.
Instant replay, sideline radios in quarterback helmets and starting the play clock immediately after the previous play were his ideas. So were wrinkles such as wide sideline borders and wind-direction strips dangling atop goalpost uprights.
He also promoted the six-division, wild-card playoff concept and introduced the world to the Cowboys cheerleaders. The nickname "America's Team" wasn't originally his, but he was the one who popularized it.
"For years, I also pushed for the elimination of the huddle," Schramm said in a 1998 interview. "The huddle is useless and time-consuming. You could run 20 additional plays a game. Maybe more."
But for 12 years, Schramm remained the Cowboys' only Hall of Famer not to be inducted into the club's Ring of Honor because of a strained relationship with Jones. In April, however, Jones decided the man who created the Ring should be in it, too. Schramm was going to become the Ring's 12th member - and he was responsible for bringing the other 11 to the Cowboys.
A strong personality with an imaginative football mind, Schramm had a fierce and protective love of the NFL.
Schramm was a significant force in the AFL-NFL merger in 1966 and was the original chairman of the league's competition committee, a position he held from 1966-88. His first committee members were Vince Lombardi, Paul Brown and Al Davis.
Before being hired by Cowboys founder Clint Murchison in 1960 to run the expansion team, Schramm worked for the Los Angeles Rams from 1947-56. He worked his way up from publicity director to general manager, then became an executive for CBS-TV Sports.
While with CBS in Los Angeles, Schramm learned the intricacies of wedding football and television, a marriage that has since brought the league billions of dollars. During that job he also gave eventual NFL commissioner Pete Rozelle his first job in the league, hiring him as the Rams' publicity director.
At CBS, he orchestrated the first-ever television broadcast of the Winter Olympics. He also hired Pat Summerall to broadcast New York Giants football games.
Schramm was 39 when Murchison, a prominent Texas oilman, hired him to start an expansion team that had yet to be approved by the NFL.
"I'd always wanted, as far back as I can remember, to take a team from scratch and build it," Schramm said. "So this was an opportunity I couldn't pass up even though we didn't know for sure that Dallas would get a team."
Among his first hires was Landry. Although complete opposite personalities, their "business relationship" - as Schramm called it - produced 20 straight winning seasons, 18 playoff appearances, 13 division titles and five Super Bowl appearances. Dallas won two and lost the other three by a combined 11 points.
Thing started slowly, though, with Dallas not winning a game its first season. Despite high hopes in 1963, the losing continued and there were rumblings of a coaching change. Schramm remained confident in Landry and asked Murchison to do the same. He responded with a 10-year contract. |
