I believe it was Friedrich Nietzsche who said, "You can never have too many good quarterbacks." Wait, maybe it was Ron Wolf, or Bill Walsh. Well, whoever penned that line sure convinced Jimmy Johnson, because in the summer of 1989 — on the heels of his first training camp in Big D — the mousse-haired one exercised the philosophy to the fullest.

In April of that year, the Cowboys had selected Troy Aikman with the No. 1 overall pick. Johnson had not been sold on Aikman, but after a private workout he was convinced the team could quickly reverse its fortune with the UCLA signalcaller. Remembered longtime Cowboys personnel director Gil Brandt, "(Aikman) threw 150 balls that day and all of them were catchable. I'd never seen anything like it. Jimmy told me, 'If we'd had him at (the University of) Miami we'd have been 24-0 instead of 23-1 and we'd have won every game by 50 points.'"

Dallas was an aging team with many holes to fill, and without full-blown free agency the only way Jerry Jones and Johnson could possibly remake the team was through Plan B free agency and the draft. The 1989 draft had been deemed a success, mostly due to Aikman. What the men were about to do next, however, was considered at the time a real bonehead move. Twenty years later, many Cowboys fans still feel the same.

The supplemental draft that July would be the most plentiful such draft of all-time, producing five selections, including Broncos RB Bobby Humphrey (a Pro Bowler) and failed Cardinals QB Timm Rosenbach. The Cowboys used a first-round supplemental pick on Johnson's former University of Miami quarterback, Steve Walsh (the guy who had actually gone 23-1 and delivered to Johnson his national championship season of 1987).

The pick created an instant quarterback controversy that carried into camp. Said third-string QB Babe Laufenberg to Sports Illustrated reporter Austin Murphy that August, "I really think it's going to be a coin flip. I get the call if the coin lands on its edge."

Of course, Aikman won the duel, then pieced together a Hall of Fame career that included three Super Bowl titles. By September 1990, Walsh had been shipped out of Dallas, and he'd spend much of his 10 pro seasons as a backup for various teams around the league.

The rub isn't what became of Walsh, but rather what became of that precious pick Dallas had used to obtain him. A team fresh off a 3-13 season in 1988 was perhaps over-confident to risk its future first-round pick on a second quarterback, regardless of what Johnson or Jones thought of him. After finishing the '89 season with a 1-15 record, Dallas ultimately sacrificed the No. 1 overall pick in the 1990 draft — a pick they could have used to select USC LB Junior Seau. Admitted Johnson a few years ago at a press gathering during Super Bowl week, "We had Seau as the best player in the draft. We had him at the top of our board." Such an addition would have made the "Team of the '90s" that much stronger.

Or did the Walsh pick actually save Dallas from itself? After having dealt Herschel Walker to Minnesota midway through the '89 season, the Cowboys were in search of a featured running back. In the 1990 draft, they got that player in Emmitt Smith. But would having the top pick have forced Dallas to consider doomed Penn State RB Blair Thomas, thus negating the team's need to move in front of Green Bay in order to select Smith at No. 17? That slight change in history could have destroyed the chain of dominoes that led to the franchise's good fortune in the years to come.

We'll never know.

What can be said of Johnson is that he was as good at getting out of a bad situation as anyone. Dallas somehow managed to sucker New Orleans into trading a first- and third-round pick in '91, and a second-round pick in '92 for Walsh. The result of that trade produced OT Erik Williams, who'd prove to be a key ingredient of the Cowboys' offensive success in the 1990s, protecting Aikman and opening holes for the league's all-time leading rusher.