Boys Will Be Boys as Boys Will Be Boys Author Meets Emmitt Smith

Jeff Pearlman, whose tremendous Boys Will Be Boys: The Glory Days and Party Nights of the Dallas Cowboys Dynasty is due in stores a week from today, appeared on ESPN’s Outside the Lines yesterday, discussing Dallas Cowboys owner Jerry Jones’ penchant for taking troubled cast-offs. Joining Pearlman was The Dallas Morning News‘ Jean-Jacques Taylor and Emmitt Smith — “perhaps the worst televised football analyst in the history of the world,” writes Pearlman on his blog. To which he adds, parenthetically, “And I was around for Joe Montana.”

As you can see from the video here, Pearlman and Smith don’t seem to like each other much — though their off-air exchange proved more tense, he notes. Turns out, Pearlman bears a small grudge against Smith, who was among the few glory-days Cowboys to talk to the author for his tome: “While working on the book,” he writes, “I contacted his representatives on multiple occasions; asked through friends of friends; so on and so on — and was told that, these days, Smith only talks to book authors if he’s paid handsomely.” Smith, apparently, isn’t fond of the book — at least, the motivations behind it. Odd thing is, the Dancing With the Stars champ comes off looking like “a saint” in the book, as Pearlman acknowledges: “He worked hard, ran his ass off, raised the Cowboys to a new level.” –Robert Wilonsky