Tom Landry: the man who gave us America's team.

COACH: We know that you grew up in Mission, TX and became an outstanding athlete in several sports. We also know that you were class president and a member of the National Honor Roll at Mission High School.

What position did you play in football and what other teams were you on?

LANDRY: When you go down to Mission, TX, it's all about the small leagues.

Since we only had about 250 students in our school, we had to play everything.

Football was my thing, but I also played basketball and track. I wasn't very good at either, but I played all four years in high school.

COACH: Not many people know that before you got to college, you had to fight a war. As a 19-year-old bomber pilot, you flew 30 missions in the Eighth Air Force. What kind of impact did that have on your life and your ambitions?

LANDRY: There's no question that those missions had a huge impact on my life. It made me grow up in a hurry and look at things a lot differently. I don't think I ever got used to flying as the war went on. We were flying the P-17 and I'll tell you that was scary. Anyone who has ever flown one will know exactly what I'm talking about.

COACH: You went on to play QB and then fullback at the University of Texas. What did you major in at college, and when did you begin thinking of advancing to the next level of the game?

LANDRY: When I came back (to college) as a sophomore in 1946, I just wanted to get into engineering, specifically petroleum engineering. The oil rigs were big business in those days and I could find work on them. During the off-season at Texas I could make enough money to start the new school year.

But football took up so much of my time that I finally had to give up the petroleum engineering. I switched to a business degree in engineering, which was an unusual degree at that time.

I didn't think much of pro football at that time. Back in 1947 and '48, it was not a big deal and we didn't know much about it. You'd see maybe one line about it in the newspapers. I really think I became interested when we (Texas) started having great teams. In 1947 we won the Sugar Bowl against Alabama and the next year we beat Georgia, the No. 1 team in the nation.

Though I didn't feel pro football would be my life, I thought I'd take a shot at it. Everyone else seemed to be doing it.

COACH: After college you were signed by the N.Y. Yankees of the AAFC, a new pro league. That was 1949. After just a year, you turned up with the prestigious N.Y. Giants. How did that happen?

LANDRY: I was very fortunate. I signed with the Yankees before anybody knew there was such a team, but when the AAFC merged with the NFL the next year, the Maras had their pick of eight players off that team. A lot of Yankee players were Texans, and that was one of the reasons I signed with the Giants. It was the only place that I knew anyone.

I got $500 to sign and about $7000 for the season -- which was considered pretty good money in those days. The top salaries were around $15,000 for the quarterbacks. I never really thought I'd ever coach. But I ended up coaching because I didn't have any money and the opportunity was there because every team needed four or five coaches. I figured I would coach for a while and then go home and earn some money in the off-season.

When I returned to Texas every year, I took courses at the University of Houston. After getting my engineering degree, I went to work for the Cameron iron works in Houston.

I really didn't get a lot of fulfillment out of coaching. I never believed it was going to be my future. So when my wife and I came back home after the 1959 season, I was actually going to get out of football.

Vince Lombardi and I had coached all the way through the '50s together. He left for Green Bay in 1959 and the next year I went to the Cowboys, just because Clint Murchison knew me and it was a Dallas thing.

That's how I got into head coaching. I told my wife I wouldn't last two years. And I probably wouldn't have, if it hadn't been for Clint. He gave me a 10-year contract at a time I hadn't won as many games as I lost.

COACH: In your years in New York, the Giants were famous for their umbrella defense. How much of it represented your thinking?

LANDRY: During the early years, the Philadelphia Eagles were one of the major powers in the NFL. When the Browns came into the league, everyone said wait until the Eagles get a hold of them. The Eagles will murder them.

Unfortunately, it was the Eagles that got murdered. The Browns became a great force in professional football.

Paul Brown kind of shaped my thinking defensively. The Giants had to deal with Otto Graham and all those great Brown players. I remember the very first time we played them in 1950. During the week, Steve Owen, the Giants' coach, told us that we were going to use a six-man line, with another player taking a middle linebacker position and the rest of us forming an umbrella behind them.

We then went over to Cleveland and shut them out, 6-0. I think it was the first time that Paul Brown had ever been shut out. We then came back to the Polo Grounds and beat them 13-7. We played them once more in the playoffs, where one of our ends jumped offsides when we were right down at the goal line, ready to put the game away. We got a pen lost 8-7. It devastated us.

COACH: Was the umbrella strictly a man-to-man defense or did it have any zone principles?

LANDRY: It was just a lineup in which we played mostly man. But it evolved into something permanent when, as a coach, I moved into a four-man line and added two linebackers, and that's how the 4-3 defense began.

When Steve Owen retired from football, the management wanted Jim Lee Howell to become the head coach. Jim, a former Giant end, was coaching a small college team (Wagner) in Staten island at the time. He made a unique arrangement with the Giants. After practice at Wagner, he would come over to the Giants and coach our ends.

The truth was that jim Lee didn't really want the job, but he convinced management that it would work if they got me to handle the defense and get someone else to handle the offense. That's when the Giants got Vince Lombardi from West Point, and we began coaching side by side.

COACH: Probably no team ever had two assistant coaches of greater quality and more diametrically opposite personalities. How did you find working with Vince on the Giants' staff?

LANDRY: Well, if his offensive team did well, it was great. if they didn't play well, he wouldn't talk to me. I handled the entire defense and he handled the offense. He was a tremendous innovator, obviously. And very tough. What you saw was what you got.

But we got along fine. He actually asked me to join him in Green Bay.

But again, I was trying to get out of football, not get deeper into it.

COACH: One mystery remains when you look back: Everyone knew that Jim Lee Howell was thinking of retiring, and that in you and Vince Lombardi the Giants had two extraordinary head-coach prospects. How could they let both of you escape? Did the Giants try to discourage you from leaving them to go to Dallas?

LANDRY: I think what really took place was that the Maras wanted me to take over. It was the defense that was the Giants' strength throughout the '50s.

That was when the crowd started roaring "Defense! Defense"! and when Sam Huff came off the field he would say, "Hold 'em, offense!"

COACH: What kind of approach did you use when you took over as head coach in Dallas? Did you use the Giants' system or did you start with a fresh design?

LANDRY: What I did was stick with the 4-3 defense and go to a multiple offense. Nobody ran that multiple offense because Lombardi, as the top dog at Green Bay, used a very simple offense.

Since he knew our defenses, we felt that we had to develop an offense that would beat our defense. So we developed that shifting up and down, putting everybody in motion, pulling everyone. Nobody else was doing that in those days.

That's when we had some pretty good games because we had that solid defense.

COACH: Everyone in the world knows how, after a building period, you went on to establish one of football's greatest dynasties, making the playoffs 18 times, the Super Bowl five times, and winning two championships.

Everyone also knows that Dallas had the greatest organization, the greatest coaches, and the greatest players. How did you feel when everyone began referring to the Dallas Cowboys as "America's Team?"

LANDRY: It wasn't the Cowboys but NFL Films that coined the term, "America's Team." They began using it in their year-in-reviews because of the team's popularity throughout the country.

It bothered us at first, but after we thought about it, we said, gosh, they're recognizing something special about us and we ought to live up to it.

We really didn't mind much after that.

COACH: Did your coaching philosophy change in any dramatic way over the 29 years you coached the Cowboys?

LANDRY: Not really, but you do have to adjust. We had to adjust the 4-3 defense and we called it the flex defense, where we moved the defensive linemen around a little bit and kept the offense off balance. Once the offense started to recognize what we were doing, we had to make changes.

It was like the Giants in 1956 when they drafted Sam Huff. We won the world championship because of the way we keyed our defense around him. We always said to Sam, "If the guy does this, you do that. If he does that, you do this. "

We keyed him and he had a great cancer. That was the difference, and we were able to make changes without changing our philosophy. Even today you see the multiple sets that we used when I was coaching -- the shotgun offense, the guys in motion all the time - all that is still with us.

COACH: What has been your impression of the game over the past six or seven years? We know that the players are always growing bigger and stronger, and maybe faster, but is all the preciseness and organization still there?

LANDRY: The thing that happened in professional football is they started passing rules. The competition committee had to do something. That's when Don Coryell went out to San Diego and their quarterback out there, Dan Fouts, was so great, and their wide-open style of offense changed the game. The rulesmen said the offensive linemen could push instead of keeping their hands on the chest. All you had to do was set up and push. So all the coaches said, all we now have to do is make the linemen big. Blocking will be a cinch if they can use their hands to push.

Add the fact that you cannot hit a receiver after five yards. Now look at what is happening in football today. The defensive backs are downfield using their hands a whole lot, and the offensive ends are really using their hands when they get past five yards. They're pushing off and getting away. It has made a difference in the game. It has completely opened it up and created more offense and more scoring.

COACH: With the corporate structure being what it is with free agency and expansion creating uncertainty, will it be possible anymore to build great dynasties like the old Cleveland Browns, the Pittsburgh Steelers and the Dallas Cowboys?

LANDRY: You won't have dynasties when you have free agency. You will have players jumping to other teams to play for a winner and make a whole lot of money. And when you have great players jumping from place to place, the great teams start losing their continuity on defense and offense and they just cannot sustain a dynasty.

No one changed teams during my days with the Cowboys. We coached our guys and waited on them to develop, but we were always trying to develop their skills. Nowadays, it seems that anyone anytime can jump if he wants to.

I don't know what the answer is. As long as you keep raising the salaries, you don't have control.

COACH: May we ask how one of the two or three greatest coaches in the history of professional football spends his working hours these days?

LANDRY: I am in the investment business with my son and he's my agent. I never realized I had an agent, but he handles all my business affairs. I am also very involved with the Fellowship of Christian Athletes across America.