Click The Logo To Donate
Posted on 07/15/2003 7:31:49 AM PDT by wysiwyg
R.I.P.
Thanks for posting this.Rest in peace, Tex Schramm.
Tex Schramm dead at 8307/15/2003
Texas E. Schramm Jr., who teamed with coach Tom Landry to transform the expansion Dallas Cowboys into America’s Team in their 29 seasons together, died this morning at his Dallas home.
He was 83.
Mr. Schramm was inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 1991 for his work as Cowboys president and general manager and his contributions to the National Football League.
Last spring, Cowboys owner Jerry Jones announced that Mr. Schramm would be inducted into the Cowboys’ Ring of Honor during the 2003 season.
Mr. Schramm had been in poor health for several years. In 1992, he underwent quintuple bypass surgery.
Mr. Landry and Mr. Schramm — aided by owner Clint Murchison, who gave them autonomy regarding the team — needed five seasons to transform the Cowboys from a fledgling franchise into a perennial winner.
The Cowboys, who went 0-11-1 in their first season under Mr. Landry, did not post their first .500 season until 1965, when the club went 7-7 and finished second in the Eastern Conference.
That proved to be a harbinger.
From 1966 to 1985, the Cowboys recorded an NFL-record 20 consecutive winning seasons, the third-longest such streak in sports history. Only the New York Yankees, who had 39 consecutive winning seasons from 1926 to 1964, and the Montreal Canadiens, who had 32 consecutive winning seasons from 1951 to 1983, surpassed the Cowboys’ streak.
In that 20-year span, Dallas won 13 division titles, made 18 playoff appearances and played in five Super Bowls, winning two.
In the process, the Cowboys became one of the most recognizable sports franchises in the world. NFL Films bestowed the moniker “America’s Team” on the franchise, and the Cowboys became the measuring stick for every NFL team.
Fans loved them or hated them. Opposing teams simply despised them.
Texas Ernest Schramm was born June 2, 1920, in Los Angeles and named after his father. Mr. Schramm said his father, the son of German immigrants, “just always used to joke he was the 12th kid and they ran out of names.”
His parents met in Texas but moved to California early in their marriage. Mr. Schramm grew up in San Gabriel, Calif. He played football in high school and was sports editor of the school paper.
In a 1989 interview with The News, he recalled that he didn’t particularly like to write but said, “I liked to express my views and be recognized.”
After graduating in 1937, Mr. Schramm attended Pasadena Junior College for a year, then transferred to his father’s alma mater, the University of Texas. He left school in 1941 to enlist in the Air Force.
Mr. Schramm returned to UT four years later. He had married his high school sweetheart, Marty Snowden, and the first of three daughters had been born. Mr. Schramm worked in the sports department of the Austin American-Statesman while attending school.
Mr. Schramm began his NFL career in public relations with the Los Angeles Rams in 1947. He needed only two years to become an assistant to the club president and five to become the club’s general manager, a job he kept until 1957.
While with the Rams, Mr. Schramm hired a young, energetic publicist named Pete Rozelle, who would become NFL commissioner in 1952.
Mr. Schramm left the Rams for CBS in 1957 after a series of squabbles with ownership. He became an assistant director of sports broadcasting at CBS. There, he continued to show the creativity and vision that will be his legacy to the Cowboys and the NFL. Mr. Schramm proposed and produced the first Winter Olympics television broadcast.
But the NFL was always his first love.
He rejoined the NFL in 1959, when Mr. Murchison hired him to build the expansion Cowboys into a champion.
Mr. Schramm didn’t just love the Cowboys. He loved the NFL, and he left a large imprint on the franchise and the league.
He and Kansas City Chiefs owner Lamar Hunt, whose American Football League team battled the Cowboys for fans and local dollars as the Dallas Texans from 1960 to 1962, worked out the 1966 merger that put the NFL and AFL under the same umbrella and into the Super Bowl.
Mr. Schramm, who became chairman of the NFL competition committee and a member of the NFL management council’s executive committee, was searching for ways to make the game better. Two of his innovations were wireless microphones for game officials and instant replay.
He played key roles in creating the wild-card playoff system and turning the thin out-of-bounds stripe into a broad white border to help officiating and increase player safety.
“I can’t think of many progressive ideas in our game over the past 25 years that Tex hasn’t had a hand in,” Mr. Rozelle said after the 1988 season.
Mr. Schramm, who set out to build the model professional football franchise, said he loved every minute of his association with the Cowboys.
“I’ve never made any bones about my belief that history is important and that I’d like to be part of it,” he once said.
Bill Sansing, who became Schramm’s friend and confidante when they worked for the student newspaper at Texas, said he knew for a long time that Mr. Schramm was a visionary.
“Tex was a genius in terms of recognizing the important elements of making a major sports franchise work,” Mr. Sansing, who went on to become UT’s first sports information director, once told The News. “With the Cowboys, Tex was the first to think of his franchise’s media market on a much larger scale. Tex thought first of the world and second of the United States.
“As a result, interest in the Cowboys far outstripped whether they won or lost. Having a Roger Staubach or a Tom Landry helped, but Tex knew how to utilize them.”
Not long after Mr. Jones bought the Cowboys in 1989, he fired Mr. Landry. Less than two months later, seeing his influence with the team vanishing, Mr. Schramm resigned to become president of the new World League of American Football.
Mr. Schramm led the WLAF for 16 months before being forced out by the league’s board of directors. He had had “philosophical differences” with other board members for months over the number of first-year franchises and the scale in which the league would operate.
Mr. Schramm attended Cowboys home games for several seasons but otherwise had little interaction with the team. Last spring, he made his first appearance to the club’s Valley Ranch training complex in 14 years to have lunch with Mr. Jones.
Soon afterward came the announcement of his induction to the Ring of Honor, which Mr. Schramm created and served as the one-man selection committee during his Cowboys tenure.
Kay Lang, who spent 25 years as the Cowboys ticket manager, met Mr. Schramm when he worked in the Rams’ front office. Ms. Lang said Mr. Schramm’s attitude made him successful.
“He was arrogant, but in a nice way,” she once told The News. “You have to have that to climb the ladder like he did. It was confidence. It was positive thinking. It was believing in yourself and your organization.”
Suzanne Mitchell, who joined the club as Mr. Schramm’s secretary in 1975 and eventually became director of the Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders, said the Cowboys were more than Mr. Schramm’s employer; they were part of his family.
“He didn’t want to miss anything,” she once told The News. “He wanted to be part of whatever was happening. The instigator, the creator. Those things always made his juices flow.”
Part of Mr. Schramm’s genius is that he understood his strengths and weaknesses. He had seen jealousy and organizational strife wreck the Rams, and he was determined to make Dallas a strong franchise.
It’s the reason he structured the Cowboys’ triumvirate — Mr. Schramm, Mr. Landry and player personnel chief Gil Brandt — in a way that ensured that each of the three had a clearly defined role within the organization.
Mr. Schramm paid the players. Mr. Landry coached the players. Mr. Brandt found the players.
“Tom knew he had authority over the players and everything that had to do with the playing of the game,” Mr. Schramm once told The News. “I had the remainder. There’s one thing you must have in football: one continuous line of authority.
“The players had to understand, as far as they were concerned, Mr. Landry was the boss. They had to understand that the only person I would listen to was Landry. Secondly, they had to understand that I had that kind of backing from Mr. Murchison. If everyone doesn’t know there’s a definite line of authority, you have chaos.”
Mr. Murchison, a strong believer in hiring the best people available and then leaving them alone to do the job, wanted a general manager who could handle the autonomy. Mr. Schramm hired Mr. Landry, a highly respected defensive coordinator with the New York Giants, and gave him complete control of the team.
“We never had a close relationship, but that doesn’t mean you can’t be successful,” Mr. Landry said shortly after he and Mr. Schramm left the club when Jerry Jones became owner in February 1989. “Tex and I were in tune. Our lifestyles were different, and people wondered how we could get along. We just meshed well in the system we were using.”
Hall of Fame coach Don Shula once said Mr. Schramm’s impact on the Cowboys was immeasurable.
“They became one of the great organizations in all of professional sports,” he said. “That just didn’t happen by accident.”
Retired staff writer Sam Blair contributed to this report.
Online at: http://www.dallasnews.com/latestnews/stories/071503dnsposchrammobit.91c0934c.html
RIP, Mr. Schramm. And thanks for the memories.
| It's all about the 'ring' for Schramm
|
| By Christine Stewart NFL.com |
(April 17, 2003) -- Tex Schramm has quite a "ring" to add to his lengthy list of achievements with the Dallas Cowboys and in the NFL.
Schramm, 82, will become the 12th member of the franchise's Ring of Honor at Texas Stadium. Nearly 28 years after defensive tackle Bob Lilly became the first honoree, Schramm will join the illustrious group he established back in the 1970s. He'll be formally inducted during a yet-to-be-named Cowboys home game this season.
"It's a great honor and something I've been thinking about for a very long time," Schramm said. "I started it, and I think it's just a tremendous honor to be included. I'm very proud."
| MORE TEX TALK |
| On whether he's still a big fan: "For sure ... the National Football League has been a great, great thing to me, and I was so involved in it for so long. It's all been such a great honor." What he considers his best draft: "I think the one in which we drafted Roger Staubach. [When it comes to the draft], all you can do is pick players and hope they turn out to be great players. We had some, and we're very proud of them." On what the Cowboys should do with the No. 5 pick this year: "They should pick the best player they can get. If one of the top quarterbacks are still available, they should take him because the most important player on the team is the quarterback." |
Schramm, the Cowboys' former president and general manager, came up with the idea for the Ring of Honor in the early-to-mid '70s. He wanted to find an innovative way to honor former Cowboys players and coaches who "made outstanding contributions to the club." Inductees' names and years of service are displayed in silver above the team's bench at Texas Stadium for all who enter to see.
"When we started having players who were really outstanding, people wanted to retire their jerseys," Schramm said. "I thought if you retire jerseys, they get put away and no one sees them, so I tried to come up with a different way to honor them. Every time you go [to Texas Stadium], the names are up there."
Schramm was the Cowboys' president and GM from 1960-1989. One of his very first hires was coach Tom Landry, and together, the pair transformed the Cowboys into one of the NFL's most successful and storied franchises. Under Schramm's leadership, Dallas amassed a league-record 20 straight winning seasons, won 13 division titles, made the playoffs 18 times, and appeared in five Super Bowls, winning two (in 1971 and '77). He was inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 1991.
Building the Cowboys into winners wasn't the only success Schramm enjoyed. He was also the NFL Competition Committee's chairman from 1966-1988, and was pivotal in revolutionizing many aspects of the game. He was a major advocate of instant replay, brought about the use of computer technology in scouting, helped institute many of the special markings used on the playing field, and endorsed rules changes that enhanced offenses and made games more exciting.
 |
|
| Tex Schramm was instrumental in molding the Cowboys into a successful franchise. |
"I think a lot of people have no idea how instrumental he was in making the National Football League the success it is today," said former Cowboys personnel director Gil Brandt. "He was very aware of fans' feelings on things. Because of his involvement with the competition committee, the league's rules got better."
Brandt and Schramm worked together in Dallas for nearly 30 years. As for how he feels about his longtime friend's induction into the Ring of Honor, Brandt couldn't be happier.
"I'm excited for him. It makes him remembered forever in Dallas. He hired me. We lived across the creek from one another; his parking spot was right next to mine in our garage building. Probably more than anybody, I know what he brought to the table."
Schramm will join Landry, Lilly, Roger Staubach, Mel Renfro, Tony Dorsett, Chuck Howley, Lee Roy Jordan, Don Meredith, Don Perkins, Randy White and Bob Hayes -- who was inducted in 2001 -- in the ring.
"I never gave up hope that it would come because I usually found that things that should happen to people that deserve it, usually it did happen," Schramm said. "I just kept that thought."
What a thought it was.
Shramm and Landry are honored names in our hosuehold. Men like them have made football great...I wish there were more of them in the sport today...in fact, in the nation.
Of course ... but he's not playing anymore and that evil Mr. Jones is in charge of the once mighty Cowboys. Again ... now the roof can be closed.
So true... Roger S. and Joe Montana were probably number 1 and 2 in the all time great list of QBs (either one could've been number 1).
Jones is the biggest mistake in NFL history (that and Georgia F. moving the Rams to St Louis).
Jones has single-handedly taken a great team and destroyed it in one and a half decades.
I was at the game in Houston last year where the brand new Texans beat the Cowboys. Before the game, Jones was strutting around the stadium like he owned the place. It was fun to see him storm out after the game with his tail between his legs! He is probably the biggest jack@$$ in the sport today. He has no shame. The Cowboys will continue to suffer until Jones no longer owns the team.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.
