Murray’s exploits match those of Cowboys greats

I was chatting with former UNLV tight end David White the other day about his employment resume that is more interesting than those of Tod and Buz from the old “Route 66” TV series. It includes stints as a stand-up comic, a pro football player in Paris and manager of BobStoops.com.

White mostly owes that last gig to DeMarco Murray.

White was head coach at Bishop Gorman, leading the Gaels back to prominence with a 30-12 record during his tenure before Gorman built its new stadium. Murray was his best player, along with Ryan Reynolds and Justin Chaisson. All three went to Oklahoma and so, too, did David White. He was Stoops’ assistant recruiting coordinator and kept the coach’s website current.

White said he knew Stoops from coaching clinics and such. But if those Gorman kids had gone to Nebraska instead, White might still be responsible for BoPelini.com. So perhaps it’s a good thing the Gorman kids signed with the Sooners.

If one can make Bob Stoops sound interesting, one can do just about anything. So in the manner of Tod and Buz in that Corvette on the Mother Road, David White has moved on. He’s back in town as a commercial pay-per-view account manager for the UFC.

DeMarco Murray has a pretty good job, too. He’s the go-to running back for the Dallas Cowboys.

Murray began Sunday’s game against the St. Louis Rams as the NFL’s leading rusher.

He also is the father of a little girl. The little girl’s mother is said to be Heidi Mueller, who played Kay Bennett on the NBC soap opera “Passions.”

Murray, who also has daytime drama good looks, rushed for 167 yards and a touchdown in the Cowboys’ 26-10 victory over the Tennessee Titans during Week 2. He was expected to really go nuts during Week 3. The Cowboys’ opponent Sunday was the St. Louis Rams, and Murray usually turns the Rams into ewes.

Last year, he ran for 175 yards and Dallas won 31-7. In 2011, he rushed for 253 yards and the Cowboys won 34-7. That broke Emmitt Smith’s Dallas record of 237 rushing yards in one game. Any time an NFL running back gets mentioned in the same sentence as Emmitt Smith it’s a good thing, unless the subject is “Dancing with the Stars.”

It would be like Heidi Mueller getting mentioned in the same sentence as Susan Lucci from “All My Children.”

So Sunday was shaping up as a good time to write about DeMarco Murray. It isn’t often a kid from Las Vegas leads the NFL in rushing, and you never know how long it will last, because Murray is sort of injury-prone and linebackers in the NFL are almost as fast as running backs. They hit hard, and sometimes there are concussions.

My first thought was to check out the game with Cowboys fans at one of the local taverns that cater to them. But I once had encountered a bunch of Cowboys fans at a tavern in Albuquerque, N.M., and they were rowdy, and there were fistfights in the fourth quarter when Washington started running up the score.

So DeMarco Murray was a little green arrow on my computer screen.

During much of the first half, the green arrow hardly moved when Murray ran with the football. You knew the Rams would be waiting for him, and then they made him fumble after Murray caught a short pass.

And then the little green arrow was pointed the other way.

St. Louis soon led by the stunning score of 21-0, and then Tony Romo couldn’t hand the football to Murray as much as the Cowboys probably had planned.

On the little TV above my computer, Matthew McConaughey was saying during the Chargers-Bills game that he didn’t drive a Lincoln to be cool, that he just liked driving one. When that was happening, Murray’s little green arrow starting moving again. It kept getting longer, like when he “rushed to the left for 44-yard gain” in the third quarter.

All right, all right, all right.

The Cowboys stormed back to win 34-31 with a franchise-record comeback.

At the end of DeMarco Murray’s little green arrow was an even 100 rushing yards — his third straight game at 100 or more at the start of a season, tying him with Smith and Tony Dorsett among Cowboys — and a touchdown, and four receptions for 31 yards.

Matthew McConaughey still was driving around Texas in his Lincoln MKC.

I clicked on BobStoops.com to see what was new with the Sooners and their coach, but an error message said the website was disabled.

Las Vegas Review-Journal sports columnist Ron Kantowski can be reached at rkantowski@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0352. Follow him on Twitter: @ronkantowski.