Parcells Wonders, You a Player or a Pansy? (Update: Or a Suicide?)

That Bill Parcells–what a friggin’ sweetheart. In the issue of Sports Illustrated subscribers will get today or tomorrow, Cowboys running back Julius Jones is the subject of the short “First Person” column, by Peter King. It’s mostly silly, pointless stuff–what Jones watches on TV, his hardest collision, meeting Emmitt Smith, that kinda filler. But the few comments he offers about his head coach are surprisingly revelatory. To wit:

On surviving a Bill Parcells NFL training camp

One day feels like three. A week feels like a month. You’re sore. It never goes away. You’re always sore.

On the day-to-day razzing he takes from Parcells

It’s not just me. It’s all the backs. Like, if he doesn’t think we’re hitting it up in the hole hard enough on a running drill, he says stuff like, “Take off the high heels…. You got three-inch heels today or five? … What color lipstick you wearing?” He keeps it interesting.

On being in Parcells’s doghouse as a rookie in 2004

We’re playing a [preseason] game, and I feel a pop in my ribs. I’ve got a burning sensation. I can’t breathe. Literally. So I come out. He says, “What are you doing?” I say, “Can’t breathe, Coach.” He says, “Get back in there.” I go back, make a block, and it’s killing me. But I knew what he was doing. He was testing me. Like the time he said to me, “I’m going to send you home. I don’t care how high we picked you.” He didn’t send me home, but I got the message: Work harder.

Apparently, when you play for the Cowboys and get hurt under Bill Parcells, well, it’s all your fault, you freakin’ fairy with your bones. I wonder where that puts wide receiver Terrell Owens, who spent the night vomiting at Baylor Medical Center and may have been attempting suicide, according to WFAA-Channel 8 this morning. And I wonder if it’s too late to become a Redskins fan. –Robert Wilonsky