Posted on Sun, Apr. 20, 2008

Dallas Cowboys officially back on 'Hard Knocks'

It's raw and revealing, and Jerry Jones can't yell, 'Cut!'

BY RAY BUCK

rbuck@star-telegram.com

S-T/RON JENKINS

Dave Campo, back with the team this season as an assistant, was the head coach in 2002 when 'Hard Knocks' first focused on the Cowboys.

• Video: Buck & New Dawg debate Hard Knocks merits for 'Boys

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IRVING -- NFL Films will deploy 50 people over 50 days to “Big Brother” every move of the Dallas Cowboys this summer.

It’s the Cowboys’ second appearance in six years as the featured team on HBO’s NFL training-camp reality show, Hard Knocks.

Seven robotic cameras with zoom capabilities will be stuck here and there, around the facilities at Oxnard, Calif. At least four film crews will shoot each day.

A total of 30 producers and editors are assigned to the project. But not even a billionaire owner like Jerry Jones will have any input in what gets shown -- or not shown.

“Zero times I reviewed or cut anything — zero,” said Jones, referring to the Cowboys’ first Hard Knocks experience in 2002.

This, of course, is both the beauty and the (potential) beast of cinéma vérité invading your NFL training camp. It’s raw. It’s revealing. It uses more film than the making of an Oscar-winning movie.

(Roughly 200 hours of film result in one hour of on-air production of Hard Knocks. Hollywood’s ratio for making a movie is normally 12-1.)

“Training camp is a laboratory of emotions,” said NFL Films president Steve Sabol, falling just short of rubbing his hands together like a mad scientist.

As with most reality shows, it’s good TV when the subject isn’t trying to be “realistic.” HBO will likely put its focus on players accustomed to the hot lights — Tony Romo and Terrell Owens, and Adam “Pacman” Jones, if he’s in camp.

But with an estimated 80 story lines, according to HBO president Ross Greenburg, a “camp star” barely known by name right now will surely emerge on the show. One always does.

In 2002, Randal Williams, Javier Collins and that “singing dorm duo” of Chad Hutchinson and Richmond Flowers III fared much better with their Hard Knocks careers than with their Cowboys careers.

The show has chronicled the Baltimore Ravens (’01), Cowboys (’02) and Kansas City Chiefs (’07). There is no blueprint to follow. The script is written on the fly.

“It’s sort of like building an airplane in flight,” Sabol said.

Cowboys players should be put on notice: They can run, pass and tackle .... but they can’t hide.

Jones is fine with the so-called “distraction” of film crews at his team’s place of work. He even welcomes it. He believes some players bear down and get better.

Said Sabol: “My first year as [an NFL Films] cameraman in 1964, I went to Green Bay’s training camp. Vince Lombardi insisted that I film grass drills.”

The legendary coach wanted to see who vomited, quit ... or both.

“Lombardi’s theory was that the camera raised the level of competition and the effort put forth,” Sabol recalled. “He’d say, ‘I want it recorded on film. I want everybody to see which guy is gutless’ ... I mean, it got to the point where we didn’t even put film in the camera.”

The Cowboys are coming off a 13-3 season with high expectations for 2008 — despite still not having won a playoff game since the 1996 season and now being in the same NFC East as the Super Bowl champions, the New York Giants.

The last time the Cowboys were the subject of Hard Knocks, they went 5-11 under Dave Campo, who was fired at the end of that season. Now Campo is back as secondary coach.

It seems to tickle Jones that the world will be watching again.

“What players do on the field is my business,” Jones said. “What they do off the field is their business ... and now it might be HBO’s business, too.”

Enough said.