- [Kofie] I know so much about Texas
for someone that's only been there once.
You know what, I could probably give tours there,
this is cool.
- I have some good news and some bad news for you.
The good news is we're gonna talk about basketball,
the bad news is we're talking about the Dallas Cowboys.
- (sighs) Come on, dude, really?
We talk about them too much as a society.
- Because I appreciate your time
and want you to know that it's gonna be worth it.
Michael Irvin is involved.
- Let's go. Oh, it's lit.
- Basically this is about back when
the Dallas Cowboys had a charity basketball team.
- Wait, what?
They, Oh, dear Lord. Okay.
- Yeah.
- All right, all right. Okay.
- In the seventies,
Drew Pearson started this off season basketball team
of him and some other Cowboys players,
people within the organization.
They would go around Texas to like small towns
and play like exhibition games, raise money for charity,
meet fans, shake some hands,
say thanks for being a supporter of the Cowboys
and that was that.
- It was the seventies, so like, yeah, there was like
a little bit of pocket change for the players,
but like nothing crazy.
- Little bit, just...
- One thing I wanna know from you though, is like,
if you had a basketball team, what would you name it?
- I think the name would be The Shooting Stars.
- That actually would fit the Cowboys also.
Yeah, The Shooting Stars are coming into town,
time to ball out.
- What they did instead was they went by The Hoopsters,
which I love--
- It was the seventies, everybody was doing it.
Everybody was doing it, everybody was being the Hoopsters.
(Will laughing)
Everybody was hooping,
I was hooping, you was hooping, the Hoopsters.
- It is the name of the team
featured at an after-school special.
- Yeah, it sounds like a really, like really, really
not intimidating street gang.
- The Hoopsters are at third and 17th, watch out
(both laughing)
Hoopsters
(both laughing)
Come out to play.
- Yeah, I mean, that's like spot on.
And maybe like, that is what they were going for.
'Cause they were usually playing in front of like kids
and you know, they were just trying to have a good time.
It's like, hey, we're the Hoopsters,
like bring the whole family.
- Did they have a mascot?
- Oh man, if they did, it was probably
just like a fifth string corner that got dragged along.
- That would be like some weird,
that'd be some weird rookie hazing I would think.
- (laughing) Yeah.
- It's like you have to be, it's like "Hey welcome to the Cowboys,
there's one thing you got to do,
have you heard of The Hoopsters?"
- The name of the game was fun in this situation,
like raise some money for charity, move on to the next town.
And then thankfully for us, that changed.
So I found this story in a boys will be boys,
Jeff Pearlman's book.
In the eighties, a linebacker named Eugene Lockhart
took over the Hoopsters.
Once he came into power, a few of the motives changed.
- We're under new management.
- (chuckling) Yep, under new management.
Shit started to get a little rowdier.
- Okay. I'm liking this.
- To quote Anthony Montoya, he was the team's manager,
he said Lockhart was not a good guy.
He was a bully who did things the wrong way.
In this situation, what that meant was
he would just like ask for like crazy appearance fees.
And he would turn all the games
into just like genuine competition.
- He was soiling the good Hoopsters' name.
- Right--
- The good Hoopsters' name.
- (laughing) And what's great is like
he's doing it against like volunteer firefighters,
dunking, like dunking on the elderly, I assume.
- I mean, to be fair, you only play who goes on the court,
you have to play your schedule.
- That's a great point.
- You gotta play your schedule.
- (laughing) This schedule of charity off season games.
So under Lockhart, things got ramped up.
But then in 1988, Michael Irvin came to town.
- We're losing recipes.
(Will laughing)
Did he actually say we're losing recipes?
I think he said we're losing recipes.
We're losing recipes, Michael Irvin.
- [Will] That was the name of his cookbook,
We're losing recipes.
- It's Michael Irvin's rant about the Colts QB situation
and the decline of home cooked meals.
- He's unreal, he's his own entity that like
needs to be studied by Stanford.
So Michael Irvin gets drafted,
he sees what Lockhart is doing as he runs the Hoopsters
and he's like, that needs to change.
So as a rookie, he led a revolt against Lockhart.
According to Montoya or the manager from earlier,
when it was over, there was lots of broken furniture
and the Hoopsters had a new leader.
- Oh man, so was this a Hoopster coup?
Is this an uprising? A coup?
- The coup-sters
- (laughing) Coup-sters?
- Irvin takes over, he saw what Lockhart was doing
and he was just like, oh, I can do that better.
We're gonna play harder, more importantly though,
we're gonna charge so much more money.
- It's Texas, no income tax, right?
- (laughing) Exactly.
- Right? Is that,
that's why people like it there, yeah?
And like the good food, the good food and no income tax.
No income tax? Low income tax, one of the two.
- The Hoopsters though,
they were traveling to like Mexico city for games,
they were going to Vegas.
- Okay.
- They asked for 25 grand to play a game.
- Yeah.
- The night of the game, when the organizers told Irvin
like, yeah, we don't have 25 grand,
we do have the like 200 people
that are here to see you play,
the response from the Hoopsters was like,
oh no, we're just not playing, and they just left.
There was a game in 1991, they were playing
the staff of a local radio station in Dallas.
There were 2000 people there, mostly kids.
- Sell out.
- (chuckling) It's a big night.
There's a 42 year old volunteer, unpaid referee.
At one point he calls a foul, that is questionable enough
that Michael Irvin just starts cursing him out
in front of everybody.
- [Kofie] In front of the kids, got it.
- [Will] The ref essentially says like,
hey, calm down, remember what we're doing,
- [Kofie] it's for a good cause Mike.
- [Will] To that, Irvin responds by
throwing the basketball at him,
and punching him right in the mouth--
- Allegedly, allegedly, allegedly.
- Allegedly.
- Thank you. Good catch.
The ref presses charges because like yeah.
- Fair, yeah.
- The PR person for the Cowboys
gives Irvin's spin on things in response
where Irvin allegedly just like patted the ref on the butt
and then the ref quickly wheeled around with an elbow
and caught Irvin in the jaw.
So, you know, two sides to every story.
- Did the Hoopsters disband
after the Michael Irvin Incident?
- God, no.
- No? The legacy lives on?
- So I mean, you have to remember at this point in 1991,
the Cowboys like still aren't great.
- Okay.
- They're flirting with being good.
- I feel like a charity basketball game is easier to win
than an NFL football game.
So I feel like the, you take
the victories where you can right?
You know, when you went on the court or on the field,
either way you celebrate afterwards.
- I mean, it had to have just been really fun.
- It's not about the charity, I guess, for the Cowboys
about the W's feeling good.
(soft music)
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