If you're a college football fan, pro football fan or enjoy watching the cheerleaders gyrate up and down the sideline, Jeff Pearlman's latest tell-all book, "Boys Will Be Boys: The Glory Days and Party Nights of the Dallas Cowboys Dynasty," is the book for you.
Pearlman has become the Michael Musto of the sports world. His first no-holds account of major league debauchery was his 2004 effort, "The Bad Guys Won: A Season of Brawling, Boozing, Bimbo-chasing and Championship Baseball with Straw, Doc, Mookie, Nails, The Kid, and the Rest of the 1986 Mets, the Rowdiest Team Ever to Put on a New York Uniform--and Maybe the Best." (The 1986 Mets are my all -timefavorite team. Not only the personalities and parties were larger than life but the Mets won 29 one-run games. Ya' gotta believe or have some major cojonoes to do that.)
Pearlman's latest effort is worth any football fan's attention. And if you really want to become an expert on NFL debauchery during the late 1980s and early 1990s, you also have to check out Mark Bowden's "Bringing The Heat," which details the on-the field and off-the-field exploits of the Philadelphia Eagles from the halcyon days of Buddy Ryan to the insufferable tenure of Rich Kotite.
Former University of Miami head coach Howard Schnellenberger put Hurricane football on the map, but Jimmy Johnson created The U. This excerpt from "Boys Will Be Boys" documents The U's disdain for The Boz:
In late September of 1986, top-ranked Oklahoma came to town to play the No. 2 Hurricanes at the Orange Bowl, Switzer's Sooners were led by linebacker Brian Bosworth, the Sports Illustrated cover boy with the multicolored flattop haircut. The night before kickoff, neither Miami tailback Melvin Bratton nor his roommate, fullback Alonzo Highsmith, could sleep. "It's five-thirty in the morning and I'm just lying there looking around.," Bratton said. Me and High are like kids at Christmas. We are so ready to get their ass. Oklahoma's been getting all the hype. It's Bosworth this and Bosworth that. I said, 'High, fuck the Boz and fuck that fade haircut of his. Let's call that sonofabitch and wake his ass up.'"
Bratton had heard the Sooners were staying at the Fontainebleau Hilton. He called the front desk and was patched through to Bosworth's room.
"Hello?"
"Is this Boz?" Bratton asked.
"Yeah ..."
"Well, this is Melvin fuckin' Bratton and Alonzo Highsmith, and this is your fucking wake-up call, motherfucker! And at high noon we'll see your sorry ass in the Orange Bowl and we're gonna kick your fucking ass!"
As soon as Bosworth hung up, Bratton and Highsmith told Hurrican defensive lineman Jerome Brown of the "exchange." Brown summoned the entire defense to his dorm room, from which they called the hotel and asked to be connected to Sooners quarterback Jamelle Holieway. "Ja-may-al, come out and paaa-lay-yay," Brown taunted, "Come on out, Ja-may-al." When he later learned of the calls, Johnson nearly fell over laughing. And why not? His Hurricanes had won, 28-16.
