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COPYRIGHT 2001 Texas Monthly, Inc.
Emmitt Smith enters his twelfth season with the Cowboys looking as fresh as a rookie. That's a good thing, because the star running back is carrying the weight of his team--and history--on his shoulder pads.
In an obscure corner of a practice field at the Cowboys training camp, well away from the bleachers and the organized cheering section of girls in lime-green costumes, I watch Emmitt Smith at work, doing the same dogged job with the same focused intensity that he has demonstrated for eleven seasons. His million-dollar legs look inexplicably sprightly for a 32-year-old. As a rule, once a running back approaches 30, the transmission drops out. But Smith appears as fresh and sassy as a rookie. In the off-season most mornings, he was at the Valley Ranch training facility by five-thirty, lifting weights, jogging, stretching. He expects another thousand-yard season, his eleventh straight, and any hopes the Cowboys have for respectability depend on it.
Smith is the last of Dallas' famous Triplets--the future hall of fame trio of Troy Aikman, Michael Irvin, and Smith--the playmakers who created one of the great sports dynasties. But of the Cowboys who played on those three championship rosters of 1992, 1993,...
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