From winning Michael Irvin’s Spike TV reality show to setting up the winning field goal for the Cowboys on Sunday:

It’s Sept. 19, and the league’s already four-for-five on ridiculously compelling national TV games — and the fifth was at least interesting.
But I’ll start with a story that, for better or worse, will feed into the Great American (NFL) Dream. It’s the story of the man who won an NFL game on Sunday, Jesse Holley of the Cowboys, and the man who gave him the chance, Michael Irvin.
“After all my mess in life,’’ Irvin told me late Sunday night, “God still used me to influence somebody’s life for the better. This is such an incredible story no one should believe it.’’
Irvin and Spike TV had this idea three years ago: give every red-blooded American who thought he could play in the NFL a chance to. Irvin got Dallas owner Jerry Jones to agree to reserve the 80th spot on his 2009 training camp roster for the winner of a reality TV show they’d call 4th and Long. Irvin would have six receivers and six cornerbacks compete against each other in a 10-show TV series, with the last man standing going to camp with the Cowboys in 2009.
First, the interested contestants — hundreds of players — were thinned out at a scouting combine in Los Angeles. One of those, the 6-foot-2, 220-pound Holley, a former basketball and football player of little renown at North Carolina, came from a job working security and selling cellphones in North Carolina. But he made the cut to be one of the six receivers. He’d been cut by both the Cincinnati Bengals and BC Lions of the Canadian Football League, and was moving on with his life when he heard of the opportunity with the TV show. “He was tall,’’ Irvin said, “and I know the Cowboys like tall receivers.’’
So Irvin put Holley in competition with five other receivers (coached by former Cowboy coach Joe Avezzano) and six corners (coached by ex-Cowboy Bill Bates), while he — Irvin — oversaw the series and workouts. They taped 10 episodes of the show in the Cotton Bowl in Dallas. “I worked them harder than they’d ever have to work in the NFL,’’ said Irvin, now an analyst for NFL Network. “I wanted to see who wanted it, who would survive.
“One time I put them all at the bottom of the Cotton Bowl and told them to run the stairs,” he added. “They were going to run the stairs, up to the top, down to the bottom, ‘til one of them quit. I told ‘em: ‘Go! Go ‘til someone quits!’ That’s how you tell who really wants something. Jesse wanted it. You know, whoever won this, the only shot they’d have right away is playing special teams. So you’ve got to want it.’’
As Holley said via a crackling cell from the Cowboy locker room Sunday: “All I ever wanted was a chance. I thank God for Michael Irvin giving it to me. I thank God for Mr. Jerry Jones giving it to me.’’

You can’t coach heart. The rest here.