By RAY BUCK
rbuck@star-telegram.com
Before the Dallas Cowboys took a snap on the final Sunday of November 1963, the Star-Telegram already had its next-day’s lead story:
“SUSPECT OSWALD SLAIN IN DALLAS.”
Five words, all caps, 72-point type.
Nothing else happening on Nov. 24, 1963, could, or would, outshout this headline.
Within 48 hours of John F. Kennedy’s assassination in downtown Dallas, suspected president-killer Lee Harvey Oswald was himself shot and killed while being transferred to the Dallas County Jail from Dallas PD.
The shock and awe was captured on live television.
Meanwhile, roughly 1,000 miles away in Cleveland, the Cowboys and Browns were about to carry out NFL Commissioner Pete Rozelle’s mandate to let the games go on.
“There was a tiny television in the visitors’ locker room at Cleveland Stadium,” Cowboys QB Eddie LeBaron recalled. “We had just come back in from [pregame] warm-up when we saw Oswald get shot by Jack Ruby.”
LeBaron, 33, was elder statesman enough at the time to provide some sage advice to his teammates.
“Put your helmets on — and keep ’em on,” LeBaron warned as they prepared to go back out and play the game.
There would be no fan incidents to report. Still, LeBaron knew that being a team from Dallas that weekend was not a popular thing to be.
“I just remember how deathly silent it was when we took the field,” said LeBaron, adding with a half-smile. “But I was used to war. I was in the Marines.”
Helmets on, boys.
The Big D stigma
What was there not to like about the Dallas Cowboys in 1963?
Nothing, really.
They were relatively unknown, relatively harmless, headed for their fourth consecutive losing season. They were a welcome sight on almost anyone’s NFL schedule.
But the perception which NFL fans had of them would drastically change 45 years ago this month: The NFL team from Dallas — with 12 wins in its first 50 games — was inconsequential no more.
“There was a stigma put on us ... [and] it was that way for quite awhile,” LeBaron said.
He and his wife, Doralee, drove home to California after the ’63 season, stopping along the way for food, gas and lodging.
“Someone would come up and ask, ‘Where you from?’ ” LeBaron recalled. “We’d say ‘Dallas,’ and they’d say, ‘Oh ... you’re the ones that shot the President.’ It was a tough deal for a long time.”
On Nov. 24, 1963 — two days after JFK was fatally wounded during a motorcade past Dealey Plaza, the Dallas Cowboys were 27-17 losers on the field and persona non grata in the stands.
Don’t blame Cleveland.
As ridiculous as it might sound now, the Cowboys were held in a bad light because of so much national anguish. People were scared.
The Rozelle controversy
Rozelle became a huge target of public criticism that weekend.
His decision to play seven football games at a time of profound grieving and national insecurity was not well-received. Even a faction of NFL ownership resented it.
Dan Rooney just recently wrote in his autobiography, Dan Rooney: My 75 Years with the Pittsburgh Steelers and the NFL: “[Rozelle] later told me it was the wrong decision, one of the few he regretted making during his term as commissioner.”
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