Living Very Large In `Big D' Brings Respect To Nate Newton

ATLANTA - It's a week before the start of minicamp, the summer of 1993, and Nate Newton knows time is against him. He is living the good life and avoiding the scales. Postponing the inevitable weigh-in. Understanding the news won't be good.

Newton, the Dallas Cowboys' Pro Bowl offensive tackle, steps on the scales. Even he is surprised.

FOUR HUNDRED AND ONE POUNDS!

"That's the only time I've ever been embarrassed about my weight," Newton said at yesterday's Super Bowl interview session. "I saw that and I thought they were going to have to bury me like a piano.

"I went out that night and ate all the pizza and chicken I could and the next day I started dieting. I might go into the weight-gaining business when I'm through with football. I know all the wrong things to do and all the wrong times to do it."

When Nate Newton is in the house, the conversation just naturally swings toward tonnage. At his present 333 pounds he feels he is an expert on the subject.

He says he knows more than all the fitness gurus and personal trainers. While they talk fat content, Newton talks genetics.

"I should take you all home and have you see my grandmomma," he says. "She looks like Earl Campbell. And look at my momma, my daddy, see my uncles. Everybody in my family's big. So all of a sudden I'm not supposed to be big? I'm not a fat man. I'm a big man.

"It's basic genetics. If you have a fat cow and a fat bull, you're going to get a damned fat calf. If you think you're going to get a giraffe, you're crazy. It's just common sense. You don't need a lot of biology or anatomy to figure that out."

Newton, 32, is living large in Dallas. Saying he is big is like saying the Pacific Ocean is wet. In this land of Goliaths, he is the biggest behemoth.

But in his eighth season with the Cowboys, Newton finally is winning respect. He is generally considered the best in his business.

Coaches no longer are obsessed with his weight. Instead, they are obsessed with his skill.

"I had to work like hell, man, to get where I'm at," Newton says.

Some people are meant to be slim and some aren't. Newton is a big man. Mount Rushmore big. Side-of-a-building big.

But he is comfortable with his bigness. He knows himself. He doesn't need some expert telling him what he should weigh.

"Two summers ago, I came in at 292," he said. "I was cut. I was ripped. And (Raider) Howie Long picked me up and threw me all the way back into the quarterback. I told myself, `This ain't going to work.'

"I keep telling people, it's not the weight, it's the conditioning. As long as I can stay at 333 or under, I can go four quarters real strong."

Newton signed as a free agent with Washington in 1983 and was twice cut by the Redskins. He played two seasons with the Tampa Bay Bandits of the USFL. He fought the odds, while he battled his weight.

He visited the Cowboys in 1986 during an audition tour of NFL camps. Tom Landry, who believed linemen should be chiseled like body builders, was the coach.

For Landry, Newton was a curiosity. A station wagon on the Indy grid. A sumo wrestler anchoring the 4-by-100-meter relay. But Landry figured if he could trim Newton to, maybe 290, he might have something special.

"When I came to Dallas, I was a joke, man," Newton says. "I weighed about 345 or 350. It was funny. Landry wanted guys who weighed like 245, 250. I came in and asked for sweat pants and they gave me some extra large. I made them rearrange their whole equipment-ordering system. They were used to dealing with small linemen. They didn't know what a Double-X size was until I got there. Even with Double-X, I had to squeeze into them. I introduced them to Triple-X."

The Cowboys' equipment manager, Buck Buchanan, nicknamed Newton "The Kitchen." The name stuck.

"I don't want anybody to go through what I went through my first four years here," Newton says. "It was hell being me. Every time I turned around, everywhere I went, it was fat this and fat that.

"When I was first trying out with Dallas I saw the coaches huddle and I've got very big ears, so I could hear what they were saying about me. They were saying things like, `Damn, he's big. I bet he couldn't do three or four chinups.' They were all smirks and laughs."

But the NFL caught up with Newton. Big became beautiful. Large was in.

"Thanks to William Perry, the coaching staff finally changed their minds," Newton says. "Perry came out and, two years in a row, crushed our offensive line and they all said, `We need a bigger guy.'

"That was me."

The Cowboys still have bi-weekly weigh-ins. Newton never makes the team's goal of 325 pounds. Every two weeks he is fined.

"I'll pay the fines," Newton says, "but the thing is, I know what weight I can't play at and what weight I can play at. And Coach Jimmy Johnson is different from Landry.

"He's a bottom-line kind of guy. He gives me a lot of leeway about my weight. He knows what I can do. He's seen what I am. He lets me be me."

He is Nate Newton. Three hundred thirty-three pounds. Large and in charge.