Cowboys guard John Niland, 3-time All-Pro and Super Bowl champion, dies at 82

John Niland, a three-time All-Pro guard who played nine seasons with the Dallas Cowboys, is dead at 82. A post on Niland’s Facebook page stated that he died at his home in McKinney, Texas, on Saturday, but did not include a cause of death.

A six-time Pro Bowler, Niland started in two Super Bowls for the Cowboys and helped the franchise claim its first championship at the conclusion of the 1971 season with a 24-3 victory over the Miami Dolphins in Super Bowl VI.

Niland spent one year with the Philadelphia Eagles in 1975, but injured his hamstring in the season opener. Knee injuries suffered during the following preseason ended his career.

Dallas selected the Amityville, N.Y., native with the No. 5 pick of the 1966 NFL Draft out of Iowa after Niland earned first-team All-American and first-team All-Big Ten honors. Iowa later inducted him into its Athletics Hall of Fame in 2006.

The post announcing Niland’s death said his family intends to donate his brain to Boston University’s CTE research center. CTE, a degenerative brain disease, cannot be diagnosed in living people. The condition, correlated with repeated head trauma, is commonly associated with mood volatility and memory loss.

“Thank you to the millions of friends and fans that have supported, cheered on and loved our John just as much as we did,” the Facebook post read.

Niland dealt with years of drug problems during and after his pro football career, which he later attributed to his desire for social status among his peers. He called cocaine “the drug of choice” at the time in a 1990 interview with The New York Times, and said he felt intense pressure as a key part of “America’s Team.”

“I did get real interested in being a status person,” Niland said. “The Cowboys were status, the whole image of being from Dallas with the winning attitude that we had. It was the Dallas mystique.”

In 1973, Dallas police restrained Niland while he was “in a partly incoherent condition” due to drug use, and he was required to undergo psychiatric observation. His substance use continued into the late 1980s, along with a series of financial troubles and legal disputes that included an 11-month stint at a federal prison camp in Texas for submitting false financial information to obtain a loan.

In 2012, Niland joined roughly 5,000 other retired players in suing the NFL for allegedly concealing the health effects of repeated head injuries. The lawsuit said Niland experienced “cognitive and other difficulties including, but not limited to, headaches, dizziness, loss of memory, dementia, depression, fatigue, irritability, and neck/cervical spine arthritis and associated numbness/tingling.”

In 2015, the NFL agreed to a settlement projected to cost it more than $1 billion, paid out over 65 years. The league agreed to pay damages for players who suffered certain cognitive problems, cover retirees’ medical exams and compensate families of players who died with CTE.

“While we were playing, we were just a piece of meat: cultivated, developed, trained and asked to perform,” Niland told The New York Times in his 1990 interview. “It’s like taking care of a good thoroughbred horse. The minute you’re on the hook, you’re slaughtered. Free game for anyone. Discarded. As good as your last performance.”

Niland and 46 other retired NFL players also sued the NFL Players Association in 2012, alleging they lost hundreds of millions of dollars in benefits as a result of labor negotiations during the 2011 lockout. The class action suit alleged retirees were locked out of CBA negotiations and that the union’s active players did not have the right to negotiate long-term benefits on behalf of former players. A U.S. district judge in Minnesota dismissed the case later that year.

By the late 2010s, Niland was working in sales and involved in a Christian youth sports group. Reflecting on his career in a 2018 podcast, Niland said he would do his career all over again, even knowing the path he eventually went down.

“Get your mind ready,” Niland advised young players. “Be prepared for your coach’s influence, good and bad. Stand your ground. Don’t let anybody take your ground. Don’t think you’re unbeatable. Just go out there every day and put the best effort you can into your performance. And if the Lord wants you to be a success at it, he will bless your efforts.”

Niland is survived by two daughters and Shaughn Ireland Niland, his wife of 34 years.