FRISCO, Texas -- Emmitt Smith had a way of speaking things into existence.
Before he even played a game for the Dallas Cowboys, he told Michael Irvin he would become the NFL's all-time leading rusher by the time his career was finished.
Irvin was entering his third season with the Cowboys, who had mustered a mere four wins in his first two years. He couldn't believe what Smith was saying. Irvin said he wanted the running back to just worry about winning one game.
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"He said he wanted to win rushing titles, and he did that. He said he wanted to win MVPs, and he did that. His last goal, which I thought was a fantasy, was to become the all-time leading rusher in the NFL. And today he did that," Irvin said the day Smith broke Walter Payton's record for rushing yards (16,726) in 2002.
Sitting in the Rose Bowl on Jan. 25, 1987, to watch Super Bowl XXI between the New York Giants and Denver Broncos as a result of being named the Gatorade National Player of the Year in his senior season at Pensacola's Escambia High School, Smith looked at his high school quarterback, Johnny Nichols, whom he took with him on the trip.
"I had this sense of visualizing myself on the football field doing exactly what the teams were doing: playing in the Super Bowl, the daddy of all bowls," Smith told ESPN recently in an interview. "And I turned to my best friend, Johnny Nichols, and I say, 'Man, one of these days, I want to play in the Super Bowl. And I want to play in this stadium.'
"Little would I know that fate would have it, six years later, I play with the Dallas Cowboys, and we're playing in our very first Super Bowl [of the era], 1993, in Pasadena, California."
Former Cowboys RB Emmitt Smith scored the first of a record five career Super Bowl rushing touchdowns on this play in Super Bowl XXVII. Gin Ellis/Getty Images The Cowboys started their three-championship dynasty with a 52-17 win against the Buffalo Bills in Super Bowl XXVII. The first Super Bowl touchdown of Smith's career was just a small piece of the Cowboys' annihilation of the Bills on a picture-perfect day at the Rose Bowl.
His 10-yard run was typical Smith, shrugging off a couple of defenders before going through one more at the goal line to give the Cowboys a 45-17 lead.