Before Michael Irvin signed for the Dallas Cowboys, he made one phone call. It wasn’t to the coach, Tom Landry, or the team’s owner. He had reached out to former Super Bowl champion Drew Pearson with a special request. 

Irvin didn’t want advice, nor did he want a handout. He simply asked Pearson if he could wear the legendary 88 jersey, the same one Pearson wore when he won a Super Bowl. And while Pearson handed it to him with a condition, little did Irvin know that the same number would attract the FBI’s attention. 

While talking on his YouTube channel, Irvin revealed the story. He had spent his first pro offseason partying hard. Irvin reunited with his former Miami Hurricanes HC Jimmy Johnson at Valley Ranch. Shortly after, FBI agents would call upon a terrified Michael Irvin for a conversation. 

“The offseason came, and I had some fun because I finally had some money in the bank. And now I’m out practicing, and I look up, here comes the FBI. We’re practicing, and everybody starts looking around and says, ‘Oh, what they doing? What’s going on, dude?’ They go up to Jimmy [Johnson]. Jimmy and the guys are talking, and Jimmy turns, and he called me. I said, ‘Oh s***, why me? What did I do?’ Now I’m running over here thinking to myself, ‘Oh my God, what did I do that has the FBI out here?’ 

You see, when Irvin was handed a million-dollar check for signing with the Cowboys, it was a moment years in the making. The young wide receiver had grown up as the 15th of 17 children in an impoverished Fort Lauderdale home. Food wasn’t easily available. Sometimes, when his siblings were asleep, he snuck to the fridge to eat milk and cereal, resorting to tap water when there wasn’t any milk.

So when he received his rookie bonus after Tom Landry picked him up in the first round, Irvin simply left the huge paper check on his apartment counter for weeks before cashing it in. For him, that kind of money was simply too alien and unimaginable at that time. But once he finally deposited the check, the young receiver had assumed federal authorities had tracked his private lifestyle and were preparing to send him away to prison.

“And I did some things, you know; I was young, and I got some money, and I’m like, ‘Oh my God, I’m ready to tell on myself, you know, try to get out of here. I’m ready to confess.’ But they told me, they said, ‘Michael, we’re going to talk to you about an investigation.’ You know what that sounds like to have the FBI tell you they want to talk to you about an investigation? My mind went BRRRR. What did you do that was FBI-worthy… I was tripping, man. I was tripping. This is a true story.”

But it wasn’t about his partying or spending. The agents quickly assured Irvin that they hadn’t shown up to the practice to arrest him. In fact, they were on the trail of a con man who was posing as Irvin all over Dallas. He was wearing a replica number 88 ring and had been fleecing several women out of thousands of dollars before Federal agents tracked him down. 

In the America’s Team’s lore, the number 88 is treated like royalty. It represents the elite WR Royalty. The con artist took advantage of that, flashing a replica bearing the famous number 88 to convince victims that he was genuinely Dallas’ new star WR. 

The bizarre identity theft left Irvin in hot water as several victims began to get in touch with the Cowboys asking for the money they were promised but never received. 

Irvin was fresh off signing a 4-year, $1.875 million rookie contract with Dallas featuring a $750,000 signing bonus, and he told them the same thing. He had a million dollars from his bonus securely stored in the bank and therefore had no reason to borrow money from people he did not know. 

Meanwhile, Irvin kept performing on the field. He played his whole 12-year pro career with America’s Team, becoming a 3x Super Bowl champion and 5x Pro Bowler. The 1x First-Team All-Pro was a massive contributing factor to the Dallas team that ruled the ’90s and has 750 career receptions, 11,904 career receiving yards, and 65 career TDs. 

This includes a 1995 season in which he had 1,603 receiving yards and 111 catches. The 1990s All-Decade wideout was inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 2007.

Years later, the Hall of Fame WR was still laughing at himself over the scary episode. Irvin was quick to point out that he had missed a golden opportunity when he was held by the police outside a Dallas hotel in 1996 during a charity golf tournament in Texas. He said that he wished he had told the police that they had walked into the wrong room and arrested his impersonator.