Irvin, Michael

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Michael Irvin

1966—

Professional football player, commentator

Wide receiver Michael Irvin was one of the most brilliantly talented and yet one of the most troubled of the star players of the 1990s in the National Football League (NFL). Just as he would make seemingly impossible catches of the long balls thrown to him by Dallas Cowboys quarterback Troy Aikman, he managed against the odds to extricate himself from increasingly serious legal problems. Irvin was a key contributor to the Cowboys' powerhouse offense and their impressive record of three Super Bowl victories during his 12 seasons of play. His exploits on the field were recognized when he was inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 2007.

Irvin's drive to excel, and perhaps his problems too, were rooted in a childhood of poverty. He was born on March 5, 1966, in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, to Walter and Pearl Irvin. Walter Irvin was a roofer and part-time Primitive Baptist preacher with an income insufficient to support the 17 children the couple raised—they came to their marriage with eight children between them already, and they added nine more of their own, of whom Michael was the seventh. The family could rarely afford milk, and Irvin often ate breakfast cereal topped with tap water—a habit he retained even as a professional football multimillionaire. Elbowed aside from food by his older siblings, he sometimes made a meal of ketchup or mayonnaise between two slices of bread.

Competing with his siblings, Irvin learned that he had to try to stand out from the crowd: sports offered him the chance. As a junior high school standout, he played football and basketball and ran track. He seemed set for stardom at Fort Lauderdale's Piper High School but became part of a clique with disciplinary problems and was suspended at the end of his sophomore year. Alarmed, his father transferred him to a Catholic high school, St. Thomas Aquinas. He missed a year of football because his former school wouldn't grant waivers allowing him to play, but he benefited from the school's one-on-one attention to students. He later endowed a scholarship there. During his senior year Irvin suffered the loss of his father to cancer but emerged as an All-State player, determined to do the work he had to do in order to make football a career.

He enrolled at the University of Miami and came under the supervision of his mentor, head coach Jimmy Johnson. The team's confrontational style suited Irvin perfectly, and he racked up three school records in his first three seasons as a starter: catches (143), receiving yards (2,423) and touchdown receptions (26). A taste of the future Irvin—over the line yet talented enough to get away with it—came in a game against Miami's archrival Florida State on the way to Miami's 1987 national championship. With Miami trailing 19-3, Esquire magazine reported, Irvin "grabbed a set of headphones on the sideline and began screaming profanely at assistant coaches to get him the ball." The result was a pair of long throws that Irvin caught for touchdowns that brought Miami a nationally hailed, comeback win. Irvin graduated from Miami in 1988 with a degree in business management.

In the 1988 NFL draft Irvin was the Dallas Cowboys' first pick. Word of his flamboyant style had gotten around, but the Cowboys, with a 3-13 record the previous year, were desperate. Irvin quickly lived up to his reputation for both talent and trash talk. "[Traditionalist coach Tom] Landry may have clenched his teeth and rolled his eyes, but he never said a word," Cowboy player Mike Renfro told Esquire. "The guy was catching balls with his fingernails. He definitely had the stuff." Signed to a $1.8 million contract, Irvin bought his brother a four-bedroom Fort Lauderdale house, with swimming pool.

It took Irvin several years in Dallas to come into his own. He was sidelined in his second season by an anterior cruciate ligament injury, after which he rebuilt strength in his knee with 30-mile bike rides that terminated at the Cowboys' practice facility. After returning to the field midway through the 1990 season, he led the Cowboys' receivers in yards per catch that year. His breakthrough year was 1991. By that time, Irvin had developed a level of comfort with the Cowboys: Jimmy Johnson, his coach at Miami, now headed the Cowboys, and Irvin had a good working relationship with Cowboy quarterback Troy Aikman. Irvin was pro football's leading receiver in 1991, collecting 93 passes for 1,523 yards, and he appeared in the Pro Bowl.

From then on, Irvin became a key part of a legendary era of Dallas Cowboys' pro football dominance. With 78 receptions in 1992 and 88 in 1993, for 1,396 and 1,330 yards respectively, he helped propel the Cowboys to consecutive Super Bowl victories. Although he reacted angrily to Johnson's firing after the 1993 season and demanded to be traded, he finally agreed to stay in Dallas, and in 1995 he posted career highs of 111 pass receptions and 1,603 yards gained en route to a third Cowboys Super Bowl win. With eight consecutive games, and 11 overall, in which he gained more than 100 yards, he tied a pair of NFL records. In a football-crazy city he was a popular star, ready to assume the position of role model for young people.

Everything came crashing down the following spring as Irvin and teammate Alfredo Roberts were arrested in a room at a Dallas-area Residence Inn; the players were sharing the room with a pair of topless models, and cocaine and drug paraphernalia were found at the scene. After the arrest, Irvin appeared in a courtroom wearing a full-length black mink coat. Sensational headlines exploded as things went from bad to worse; Irvin allegedly threatened another model who testified against him, and her common-law husband, a Dallas police officer, was charged with taking out a contract to have Irvin killed. Finally a contrite Irvin pleaded guilty to cocaine possession, paying a fine of $10,000 and performing 800 hours of community service.

Suspended for the first five games of the 1996 season, Irvin bounced back with strong years in 1997 and 1998, topping 1,000 yards in pass receptions each season. In the fifth game of the 1999 season, however, he was hit hard on a tackle by Philadelphia Eagles linebacker Tim Hauck and landed head first on the turf. Irvin suffered a cervical spinal cord injury that was not life-threatening but ended his career. His lifetime 750 pass receptions for 11,904 yards gained, and his 47 games with more than 100 yards gained in pass receptions all placed him among the top ten players in NFL history in their respective categories. He appeared five times in the NFL's season-ending Pro Bowl all-star game, in which he often displayed a much more competitive attitude than did his fellow players.

At a Glance …

Born Michael Jerome Irvin March 5, 1966, in Fort Lauderdale, FL; son of Walter (a roofer and Primitive Baptist minister) and Pearl Irvin; married Sandy; children: Chelsea, Michael, Elijah, Myesha (from previous relationship). Education: Miami University, Miami, FL, BA, business management, 1988.

Career: Dallas Cowboys, professional football player, 1988-99; Best Damn Sports Show, The NFL Show, Fox Sports Network, on-air personality, 2000(?)-03; Sunday NFL Countdown, ESPN television, on-air personality, 2003-07; TMI Group real estate (subsidiary of Tetra Companies), co-owner, 2007-.

Awards: Five-time Pro Bowl team member; Dallas Cowboys' Ring of Honor, inducted 2005; Pro Football Hall of Fame, Canton, OH, 2007.

Addresses: Office—Fox Sports, PO Box 900, Beverly Hills, CA 90213.

Irvin's legal problems did not end with his 1996 cocaine plea. A rape accusation later that year, al- though false and eventually recanted, damaged his image, and in a bizarre 1998 incident he inflicted a two-inch cut on the neck of teammate Everett McIver while players were getting haircuts at the Cowboys' training camp. The incident was chalked up to horseplay, but Sports Illustrated cited local journalistic reports describing a six-figure settlement that dissuaded McIver from filing assault charges. In 2000 police found marijuana in a Dallas apartment that Irvin was sharing with a woman. The following year he professed a religious conversion, but in 2005 he was arrested again after a traffic stop in Plano, Texas, and charged with possession of drug paraphernalia. He maintained that the materials belonged to an acquaintance.

Irvin's reputation took a hit from each of these incidents, but only the cocaine bust led to serious legal consequences. He was supported by his wife, Sandy (with whom he lived in suburban Carrollton with four children, one of them from a previous relationship), and he bounced back professionally from each low point. After retiring from play, he remained involved with football as a broadcaster on the Best Damn Sports Show on the Fox Sports cable network and on his own Michael Irvin Show. In 2002 he joined Fox's The NFL Show, and the following year he added the post of commentator on ESPN's Sunday NFL Countdown to his resume, remaining with the network until 2007. Outside of football, he became a partner in the Tetra Companies' TMI Group real estate investment firm. Further recognition of Irvin's legendary skills, as well as rehabilitation of his image, came with his induction into the Pro Football Hall of Fame in the summer of 2007. His acceptance speech was an emotional one in which, according to ESPN, he quoted scripture: "You know the Bible speaks of a healing place. It's called a threshing floor. The threshing floor is where you take your greatest fear and you pray for help from your great God."