The Dallas Cowboys were thriving with a peak WR in now-Hall of Famer Michael Irvin. Five straight Pro Bowls, three Super Bowl victories in a span of four years; he’d given to Dallas beyond what was expected of him. According to renowned NFL reporter Peter King, that allowed Irvin to carry the peculiar attitude and persona he is now known for. 

“Understand something about football. You can be a skilled player, but you can be a bad—,” King said during his appearance on ESPN’s This Is Football Podcast. “And Michael Irvin was the boss of that locker room when the Dallas Cowboys were getting good, and he was tough as nails. He didn’t care what the right PR was, what anything was. When I said I wanted to interview him the first time I was in Dallas, covering the Cowboys, he said, ‘Okay, come to my office.’ So, I said, ‘Okay.’ I figured he had an office somewhere. 

“After practice, I get in my rental car, I follow Michael Irvin, and we end up in the parking lot of a strip club. I said, ‘What are we doing here?’ He goes, ‘You came to my office.’ So, we went in there, we sat in there … And here’s the thing – Michael Irvin didn’t care. 

“So, what if I wrote about it that I interviewed him in a strip club? He doesn’t care. All he cared about is ‘I’m doing things my way.’ And he was always able to back up the bravado, back up everything with performance on the field. He might have looked like this skinny guy and all that, but he could dish it out. He really could dish it out.”

Irvin even joked about King’s position at that time. The latter recalled Irvin saying he had “something to hold over your head.”

Irvin has long bid the gridiron goodbye. But he is still every bit the firebrand he was then. In August this year, a 60-year-old Irvin chatted up with Cowboys owner Jerry Jones, who was seen walking with a cane. The former WR then jokingly taught the 83-year-old, who is also one of the biggest figures in the NFL, how to “pimp-walk.”

However, Jerry Jones has nothing but love for the former WR.

“I love him because I see so much of me in him,” Jones told Bryan Curtis in 2017. “In that a lot of what we are overcoming are our foibles. I’m a guy that’s used eight of my nine lives.”

However, the media didn’t entirely let Irvin slip away with everything. There was the infamous White House scandal (not to be confused with the White House in Washington DC), which broke in 1996. It was a property where Cowboys players used to party. It became one of the talking points of his career.

Irvin is aware that he tends to be in the media a lot. He reflected on the coverage about him in an interview with Curtis for The Ringer.

“Can you imagine Twitter every second?” Irvin said. “Are you joking? I got in trouble with News at 11:00.”

Nevertheless, King acknowledged that dealing with Irvin was an “utterly fantastic” experience for him. After all, it was the first time he interviewed the Cowboys star at length. It was certainly a rare privilege for any journalist to have that kind of access to Irvin during his prime.

Today, Irvin is still the loud Michael Irvin he was back in the day. Some fans continue to ridicule him, while others always allude to his contributions on the field.

But both of those things go hand in hand for Michael Irvin. Both sides have played a pivotal role in his career as a broadcaster today.