Jimmy Johnson

In a boast reminiscent of Joe Namath, Dallas Cowboy Coach Jimmy Johnson has guaranteed a victory over the San Francisco 49ers on Sunday. "We will win the ballgame," Johnson exclaimed on Ft. Worth's WBAP-AM. "You can put it in three-inch headlines: We will win the ballgame." Johnson made the comments during a talk show hosted by Dallas Morning News columnist Randy Galloway.

"Let it die." That was Jimmy Johnson's reaction to a report that his former boss, Cowboy owner Jerry Jones, had asked the NFL to bar him from the sideline at the NFC championship game. The league turned down the request. "I wasn't going down on the field anyway," said Johnson, the former Cowboy coach who now works for Fox. "I had a job up there in the pregame show. I didn't want to be a distraction."

"Did you tell them about the Bills' comeback against Houston?" NBC's Todd Christensen asked Jimmy Johnson at halftime, with the Cowboys up 18. "We're not Houston," Johnson snapped. That's unfiltered ego right there. That's livin' large. That's what it takes to win the larger-than-life Supe, which is always won by big plays--actually by players with the guts to make the big plays on such a public, pressurized stage. JOHN EISENBERG The Baltimore Sun

An announcement of the sale of the Dallas Cowboys could be made as early as today, a spokesman for the National Football League franchise said Friday, as speculation surrounding Coach Tom Landry's future with the organization intensified. H.R. (Bum) Bright, majority owner of the team, met for much of the day with Arkansas oilman Jerry Jones, who the Miami Herald said had worked out a deal to buy the team for $180 million.

He doesn't even look like a football coach. A cherub in a Christmas play, perhaps. The kid next door. First of all, there's that apple-pie round face, the unblinking blue-eyed stare, the blond hair too carefully coiffed. No tobacco juice trickling down the chin, no blue-black stubble of beard. The voice when he speaks is a high-pitched East Texas twang, no rumble like a mine cave-in. He'd never be "the Bear," "the Rock," "Pop" or "Iron Mike." He's Jimmy, Jimmy Johnson.

"Yond Cassius has a lean and hungry look . . . . Such men are dangerous." --Shakespeare, "Julius Caesar." Across the desk from me sat the man who wasn't Tom Landry. He was kind of a disappointment. I mean, he didn't look like what you would expect--a kind of furtive-looking guy who wouldn't look you in the eye, who would have this kind of shifty look about him--sallow complexion, nervous tic in one eye, biting his nails a lot, mumbling his answers, looking at his watch.

The gig: Co-founders and head coaches of Advantage Tennis Academy in Irvine, which trains promising school-age players for tournament play. The academy, which uses facilities on the grounds of the Racquet Club of Irvine, currently has about 100 students, of whom 30 are full-time, including 20 boarding students.