Some of you guys have been asking for my favorite training camp story. Well, here ya go:
I was eating lunch with Cowboys beat writer Todd Archer a few hours before a preseason game in 2005 when the club's quarterbacks coach, David Lee, walked up and asked if he could join us. We barely knew Lee, so you can imagine how surprised we were when he sat down and started telling us a bunch of inside information on the Cowboys' quarterback situation. He told us how angry he was when Drew Bledsoe had asked him to hold his visor one day during practice and gave us detailed breakdowns of his young backups, Drew Henson and Tony Romo.
For the next couple of days, Todd and I tried to figure out what led David to open up to us after not acknowledging our existence during his previous two years on staff. Well, it all became clear a couple of days later when we returned to training camp in Oxnard, Calif. I was just wrapping up an interview when Lee walked up to me and asked me why I needed a notepad.
"Well, I'm a reporter," I said.
All the color in Lee's face disappeared before he said, "Oh [expletive], I thought you were the team doctor!"
I spent the next several minutes talking Lee off a ledge, and we eventually became friends. And now that he's the offensive coordinator at Arkansas, I feel pretty safe telling the story.
Oh, and if you missed our piece on training camps tales from the weekend, here's a link.
