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FRISCO, Texas — Not long after he was named the 10th head coach of the Dallas Cowboys, Brian Schottenheimer received a text message from his high school coach.
“If it gets stressful,” Steve Rampy wrote, “just give them a BYA shirt.”
The message took Schottenheimer back 34 years to when he was a senior at Blue Valley High School in Overland Park, Kansas. The Tigers did not make the playoffs during Schottenheimer’s junior year in 1990 and the players came up with a slogan for the following season.
On the front of the shirt was the school’s mascot, a Tiger. On the back were the letters BYA.
They told the school’s principal it stood for “Bring Your Attitude” so she would not get upset.
Really, it meant “Bust Your Ass.”
Schottenheimer is a little more than a month into his new role with the Cowboys. He has put a coaching staff together. He went through the NFL combine in Indianapolis, straddling the line between installing schemes on offense and defense with the staff, as well as understanding the college prospects. The offseason program can start as soon as April 7.
Until then, league rules prevent him from having in-depth football conversations with his players, but his message to them will be similar to the one used all those years ago at Blue Valley.
“At the end of the day, I’m huge in work ethic, and I look for that in people because I demand that from myself,” Schottenheimer said. “I really believe you can outwork people in every endeavor, but certainly in this business because people tend to — for different reasons — get kind of complacent. They get comfortable. The word I probably use more now is ‘grit.’ That’s why it’s tattooed on my hand.
“Absolutely each day, like, ‘Hey, get up and bust your ass to be the best you can be or get up every day and work your ass off to be the…
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