Best-selling author and liberal Jew from New York Jeff Pearlman has a new book on the 1990s Cowboys that comes out today (Buy it here). Now, you probably already know that this book has already given us the profound gift that is Charles Haley masturbating in front of teammates. A little meet and skeet, if you will. Ah, but that is merely one of the many juicy tidbits that litter Pearlman’s book, which reads like a virtual “Hammer Of The Gods” for football.

For instance, there’s the fact that Michael Irvin, in addition to being a cokehead, a philanderer, and a selfish prick, is also an… how does one put this? Oh yes… AN ATTEMPTED FUCKING MURDERER. See now, I had remembered long ago that Irvin had gotten into a fight with teammate Everett McIver, but I had forgotten about this tidbit of information:

Irvin grabbed a pair of scissors, whipped back his right arm, and slashed McIver across the neck… inches from the carotid artery.

What was McIver’s transgression? He wouldn’t get out of the team’s barbershop chair when Irvin showed up for a haircut. When Irvin showed up and saw McIver getting his hair cut, he screamed: “Seniority! Seniority! Seniority! Punk, get the fuck out of my chair!” When McIver refused, the two got into a fistfight, which then led to Irvin STABBING HIM IN THE NECK WITH SCISSORS. Irvin then paid McIver off for six figures, charges were never filed, and the team tried to bury the story (They were not very successful in this regard).

So, yeah, there’s a Hall of Famer for you. Pearlman has a knack for getting great stories from everyone surrounding the team. The book is packed top to bottom with tales of players fucking, fighting, or doing drugs. And that’s the hallmark of any classic book, as far as I’m concerned. I know that’s all I ever want to read about.

As Pearlman tells the tale of the team, from Jimmy Johnson’s hiring all the way through to the end of the Switzer era, it became clear to me that a team like this simply doesn’t exist anymore. It can’t. As the NFL has become a corporate monolith, and as the Internet has taken over the way NFL news is both created and digested, the idea that a football team can get away with everything depicted in Pearlman’s book is now laughable.

Those 1990’s Cowboys represented the end of an era, an era that had no salary cap, an era where players (and coaches) could party all the time and still win multiple titles. There’s a tone of wistfulness here, the idea that this was the end of true old time football, and that the NFL has lost a bit of its soul in the ensuing years as it has grown bigger and bigger.

Just as real rock stars don’t walk the earth anymore, NFL players are now packaged and micromanaged to the point where they aren’t allowed to be the gloriously flawed people that fans, against all rationality, grow to love. In some ways, that’s tragic. In other ways, Michael Irvin STABBED A FUCKING GUY IN THE NECK WITH SCISSORS. So I suppose you take the good with the bad.

Some more fascinating tidbits:

-Charles Haley once cut a hole in the roof of Tim Harris’ BMW and pissed onto the steering wheel. This story made me happy, because as a Vikings fan I fucking hated Tim Harris.

-Once in a team meeting, Haley came back from the bathroom, pulled down his shorts, wiped his ass, and threw his poopy toilet paper at 49ers linebacker coach John Marshall.

-During another team meeting, Haley whispered to teammate Scott Case, “Scott, turn around, I gotta show you something… Scott, dammit, turn around! You need to see this!” When Case turned around, according to Pearlman, he “saw Haley’s erect penis stretched across the desk.”

-The Cowboys often held position meetings at strip clubs.

-Michael Irvin financed a Cowboys charity basketball team called the Hoopsters that had its own private plane, which was mostly used to hold airborne orgies, with Irvin dictating who should be fucking who. “There was nothing Mike couldn’t think of,” said his assistant. “He had quite the imagination.”

-Irvin also charged huge personal appearance fees for the Hoopsters to show up at events. In one case, he charged the Little Dribblers of Fairfield Texas $5,600 to appear, then RAISED the fee, then failed to show up and refused to refund the original money after the organizer balked at paying the increased charge. Irvin also slugged a volunteer ref during one of the team’s games.

-The Cowboys gave specific instructions to American Airlines to only hire beautiful attendants for their charter flights, and kept a book with photos and measurements of the best-looking stewardesses.

-One Christmas, Emmitt Smith gave teammates copies of his own autobiography as a gift.

-When he was very young, Barry Switzer’s mother committed suicide in front of him. Even worse, she did it just after Switzer had bravely (and quite eloquently) confronted her about her alcoholism. And if you can’t feel for Switzer after reading the whole story, I don’t really want to know you.

-Nate Newton once hid a Snickers bar in his uniform, which then flew out during a game. Afterwards, cornerback Larry Brown was heard to remark, “Did a damn candy bar just fly from Nate’s body, or am I imagining things?”

-Jerry Jones routinely cheated on his wife with a Texas Stadium Corp employee named Susan Skaggs, often using the team plane to do so. (What is it with the Cowboys and fucking in the sky?) Jones’ pilot said, “We could feel the airplane moving and shaking. It didn’t move and shake that long.” WOO HOO!!! YOU AIN’T EVER HAD LOVIN’ LIKE THE OL’ DOUBLE-J! Excuse me for moment. I now have motion sickness.

-Switzer fucked the wife of player personnel head Larry Lacewell. And Lacewell wasn’t even mad about it.

And now some money quotes:
Haley to Steve Young in the locker room after a 49ers loss: “I could have fucking won that game in my sleep! You’re a motherfucking pussy faggot quarterback! A motherfucking pussy faggot quarterback with no balls!” You know, I used to say the EXACT same things about that guy!

James Washington on Jim Everett: “Yeah, I would smash Jim Everett when I wasn’t supposed to, but I thought the bitch was a punk.”

Washington: “A lot of were addicted to it… to the pussy.” Well, who can blame anyone for pussyholism?

Irvin, to teammates in the locker room: “How can I allow only one woman to have a body this good? This is the body you will aspire to have. This is the body you will aspire to achieve. You will not achieve it, but this is what you will strive to achieve.” Notice he made no similar boasts about his brain.

Anonymous player: “Mike got more Cowboys laid than touchdown catches.”

Anthony Montoya, Irvin’s assistant: “The one thing I felt guilty about is helping Mike lie so many times to Sandy (Irvin’s wife). He cheated on her nonstop.”

Columnist Mike Freeman on Emmitt Smith: “He had a huge ego that made him sort of a dick.”

Emmitt Smith to cornerback Clayton Holmes, after Holmes asked Smith to sign an autograph for his mom, with his mom standing right nearby: “Man, I ain’t signing shit!”

Anonymous player: “Mike didn’t have a drug problem. Mike had a pussy problem.”

Jerry Jones: “I could step out and hire Barry Switzer as coach of the Dallas Cowboys tomorrow and he’d do a better job than Jimmy (Johnson). Hell, I could probably get Lou Holtz over here.”

“I had one of those anal probes, but I’m a little more clearheaded now… Did you say you wanted me to coach the Cowboys?…” Switzer to Jones, after being offered the Cowboys job right after having a colonoscopy. Jones never bothered to interview Switzer before offering him the job.

Switzer, at his first meeting with the team: “Where the hell is Charles Haley? I’m mad at you! I heard you flicked your dick at everybody, and you didn’t do it to me? What am I, chopped liver?”

“Give me five minutes and I’ll take you to heaven,” Jones to a female friend of a reporter. He also asked the woman if she had any panties on under her skirt.

And all that barely begins to scratch the surface of what Pearlman was able to dig up. So I implore you to buy “Boys Will Be Boys” with all due haste. That way, we can all make inside jokes about Charles Haley’s Frankencock TOGETHER, as a family.

As I’ve said before, I’m not really much of a reader. Your parents may have told you that reading is cool, but that’s a lie. Reading is crazy gay. If one of your roommates is playing Madden and the other one is reading “Eat. Pray. Love,” guess which one you’re gonna want to go drinking with? Not the douche trying to expand his mind, that’s for sure.

But recently, best-selling author and Official Friend Of The Blog Stefan Fatsis sent us a copy of his new book ”A Few Seconds Of Panic,” which comes out today. So I read it. And, in doing so, it occurred to me that one way to alleviate the agony of not being able to watch football during the offseason is to read about it. Who knew? It’s almost as good as the real thing. Except I can’t hold a beer, eat chips, and hold open a book simultaneously. Hey publishing industry: if you want more of us to read, every book should come with a free music stand to rest the book on. That would be some good shit.

Fatsis wrote his book after spending training camp with the Broncos as a place kicker and then covering the team through the 2006 season, a season that included Jake Plummer’s benching in favor of Jay Cutler, and Darrent Williams’ murder on the same day the 49ers knocked the Broncos out of the playoff hunt. Fatsis also did not take part in ANY contact drills. What a puss! Hey Fatsis, put a hat on and go hit someone, you timid little Greek bastard. I don’t care if you’re “too old”, or “too small” or “in possession of two reconstructed knees that could crumple any second”. NFL players routinely destroy their bodies purely for my enjoyment. I see no reason why you can’t do the same.

The most illuminating thing about the book is the fact that, by and large, most football players can’t stand their fucking jobs. Oh, they like playing in games. But they only get to do that three hours a week. The rest of the week blows. The coaches are assholes. The fans are assholes. The media are assholes. The pay isn’t really all that great if you’re just a practice squadder. You get hurt constantly. And chronically. And, when you do get hurt, you don’t get a card that everyone in the office signs like at my day job. You get fired.

There’s no job security unless you’re an All-Pro, and 99% of guys aren’t that. Most of the players can’t even figure out why they do it. They’re constantly being hired, then fired, then rehired, and the re-fired. Hundreds of guys are hired every year to bust ass through camp, despite management having no intention of keeping them when roster cuts come down. Your pay for going through camp? A few grand. Most of those guys never even earn the yearly minimum. Coaches constantly tell players their jobs are in jeopardy, yet refuse to clue them in as to where they stand. If your boss did this, you’d fucking murder him.

In a way, it makes sense that NFL players are so jaded and cynical. Unlike most sports, football is the one sport where your time spent actually playing is but a mere fraction of the time you invest: lifting, practicing, going to boring as shit meetings, going to game “rehearsals” where you stand in formation 90 times over, etc. Compare that to baseball. Baseball players get to spend most of their time playing in REAL games. That’s fun. Football? Eh, not so much. You gotta sit through a whole lotta bullshit to get to Sunday.

You also come to learn a few other things from Fatsis’ book, like:

-Todd Sauerbrun is a total asshole.

-I mean it. A real douche. But you probably already surmised that.

-Tight end Nate Jackson’s hip hop name is “Jack Nasty”

-Mike Shanahan can best be described as aloof, detached, insensitive, unemotional, manipulative, uncharismatic, controlling, uncommunicative, petty, and at times incompetent. And, of course, overly tan. But most players agree, he’s one of the BETTER coaches to play for.

-Jake Plummer’s a badass.

-Jason Elam is one of those Tebow-esque, Evangelical Christian overachievers who seems kinda cool to hang out with. Unless you’re gay. He might not like that.

There’s also no shortage of candid, profanity-laced quotes from people in the Broncos organization that, when extrapolated from the broader story, could be totally blown out of proportion by the media. So let’s go ahead and do that right now…

Jake Plummer: “Yeah, I missed some (offseason) workouts. And you know what? Mike Shanahan, you can kiss my fucking ass for being pissed at that… I don’t want to be here every fucking day in the offseason.”

Nate Jackson: “Half the guys out there fuck up, basically, every single play.”

Ian Gold: “This is a business. When I’m here on this field, it is absolutely business. When I’m in the meeting rooms, it is business. Don’t hug me, don’t touch me, don’t call me your buddy, don’t tell me you love me, because I know you’ll motherfuck me as soon as I leave the room.”

Mike Shanahan (after a bad practice): “Guys get their opportunity, they shit in their hat.”

Tom Nalen (to Fatsis after missing a kick that would have saved players 30 minutes of meeting time): “Thanks for fucking us.”

Jake Plummer (to Pat Bowlen): “Hey, Mr. Bowlen, those are sweet boots. Where’d you get ‘em?”

Pat Bowlen (to Jake Plummer): “Aw, these are some fuckin’ ostrich skin. You got to get yourself a pair of these, you little fucker.”

(NOTE: Bowlen will indeed become a new KSK kharakter. He’s like the Double-J’s brother.)

Jason Elam (regarding the theory of evolution): “You’ve got this goo man they want you to think we came from. It doesn’t make sense to me.” (Yeah, scientists! What’s with this half-assed goo man shit? There’s nothing in the New Testament about Swamp Thing!)

Ian Gold: “The hard part for me is dealing with a lack of loyalty, dealing with people who have such a lack of integrity that it’s just sickening… You have coaches that will smile in your face and they’ll shit on you the next second.”

Jake Plummer (to Mike Shanahan during a game): “Just call the plays. I’m going out there and playing fucking football.”

Good stuff, Fatsis. You gave me a real glimpse inside the minds of NFL players. You got me to sympathize with them. Not enough to stop making fun of them, but a good amount nevertheless. I give your book a hefty FOUR THROWGASMS. I would have given you five, except that you say in the book that Matt Stover deserves to be in the Hall of Fame. Pfft. Matt Stover can suck my balls.