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Emmitt Smith Game Worn 10,000-Yard Dallas Cowboys Uniform
Emmitt Smith, Collectable’s first brand ambassador and the NFL’s all-time leading rusher, kept much of his favorite career memorabilia. The Dallas Cowboys uni he was wearing when he topped the 10,000-yard mark is among his most prized pieces.
59,000
Market Cap
2,400
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10
Share Price
“I may win, and I may lose, but I will never be defeated.”
-Emmitt Smith
In his 13 years with the Dallas Cowboys and his two years with the Arizona Cardinals, Emmitt Smith set NFL records with 18,355 yards and 164 rushing touchdowns. Along with Troy Aikman and Michael Irvin, Smith helped lead the Cowboys to three Super Bowl victories.
The University of Florida graduate appeared in six Pro Bowls, was named to four All-Pro squads, and won an NFL MVP, a pair of Jim Thorpe MVPs, and one Bert Bell Award. Currently, he’s involved with a number of successful businesses, among them Collectable Technologies.
ABOUT THE ASSET
Presented is the uniform Emmitt Smith was wearing when he broke the 10,000-yard rushing mark on November 28, 1996. His performance in the 21-10 victory over the Washington Redskins was a particularly good one, as he rushed for 151 yards and scored 3 touchdowns. Those 151 yards pushed him ahead of Jim Brown on the NFL’s all-time rushing list.
The uniform, which is complete with jersey, pants, and cleats, comes from Smith’s personal collection.
Manufactured by Nike, the jersey is the Cowboys home white with Smith’s name and #22.
COMPARABLES
In 2021, a 1996 Smith jersey not associated with a milestone game was available at Steiner Sports for $10,000.
Smith rookie cards have been valued upwards of $50,000
ATHLETE TIMELINE
Written By Alan Goldsher
Emmitt Smith: Mr Milestone
If you’re the all-time leading anything, you’ve hit some milestones along the way.
For a chef, that milestone could be a James Beard Award. For an author, maybe it’s a Pulitzer Prize. For a musician, it’s likely a Grammy.
For Emmitt Smith, it’s damn near everything.
Here’re some of the running back’s most notable career numbers, in sequential order:
- 1: Yard on first career carry.
- 2: MVP awards: one for 1993 regular season and one for the 1994 Super Bowl.
- 3: Super Bowl championships.
- 4: Rushing titles.
- 4.3: Career per-carry average.
- 5: Siblings, including Emory, who made Cowboys’ practice squad in 1997.
- 6: NFL career rushing leaders since stats started being kept in 1932. All are Hall of Famers.
- 7: Games missed (four with injuries, two for holdout, one inactive). Dallas is 1-6 without him.
- 8: Seasons with 10 rushing TDs, two more than anyone else.
- 9: Pro Bowl selections.
- 11: Seasons with 1,000 yards, an NFL record.
- 11: Yards on run that broke the NFL career rushing record.
- 17: Number overall draft pick in 1990.
- 20: 100-yard games after age 30, second to Walter Payton’s 23.
- 22: Teams against whom he’s run for 100 yards.
- 25: Rushing touchdowns in 1995, an NFL record.
- 42: Team-record touches (32 runs, 10 catches) in 1993 season-finale vs. Giants, 17 of which came after he separated his right shoulder.
- 44: One-yard TD runs.
- 45: 100-yard games in high school, a national record.
- 58: Records set at Florida.
- 75: 100-yard games in the NFL, two shy of Payton’s mark.
- 75: Longest career TD run.
- 86.6: Average yards over 192 career games, fifth-best all-time.
- 93: Games needed to reach 100 career touchdowns, tying Jim Brown’s record.
- 150: Career rushing TDs.
- 237: Yards in best game, Oct. 31, 1993, against Philadelphia.
- 540: Yards needed to break career rushing record when season began.
- 1,586: Postseason yards, a record.
- 1,773: Yards in best season, 1995.
- 3,929: Career carries, an NFL record.
- 8,804: Yards at Escambia (Fla.) High.
- 16,743: Career yards, an NFL record.
Emmitt, a sentimental soul, loves those digits, but one of his favorites is 10,000, as in 10,000 yards, a nice round number that you can point to and say, “Dang. That’s a lot of yards.”
For context, it’s also a decent amount of miles, 5.68 to be exact. Now 5.68 miles might not seem like a whole lot—most of us total that much in two or three days—but imagine walking those 5.68 miles while a bunch of uber-athletic 300-pounds dudes are trying to knock you down and steal your lunch.
For more context, there are multiple players in the NFL Hall of Fame who didn’t top 10,000 yards for their entire career, among them Earl Campbell, Larry Csonka, Jim Taylor, and Terrell Davis.
Understandable why Emmitt digs his 10K.
Watch This
Take a deeper dive
THE WHOLE TURKEY ENCHILADA
Smith and the Cowboys vs. the Redskins, Thanksgiving 1996
GOOD AS GRAVY
Better Thanksgiving RB: Emmitt Smith or Barry Sander
HE’S PRETTY GOOD ON OTHER HOLIDAYS, TOO
Emmitt drops 237 yards vs. Philly on Halloween night
To exactly nobody’s surprise, Smith played the 10,000-yard game with an injury. Y’see, throughout his Hall of Fame career with the Cowboys and the Arizona Cardinals, Emmitt got hurt. A lot.
Do a quick Google search of “Emmitt Smith” and “injury” and you’ll read about messed-up necks, and jacked-up shoulders, and crushed hands, and debilitating migraines, and tweaked hamstrings, and so on, and so on, and so on.
On the 10,000-yard game in question—a Thanksgiving special against hated rival Washington Redskins—Emmitt took to the field with a sore ankle that had forced him to the bench the previous week. The ultra-competitive Smith wasn’t thrilled about sitting, as he explained after the Redskins game:
“My first instinct was to get mad. But as I thought about it, I knew if I’m not doing my job, then I’ve got to take a back seat. To hear all the negative stuff this week, it was an insult to me. It cut deep. [But] the ankle wasn’t allowing me to play like I [wanted] to.”
But even Smith—who, naturally, further tweaked the ankle during the ‘Skins game—should’ve expected this sort of explosion, as he owned Thanksgiving football. Check out what the piledriving running back did while we were at home, gorging on pumpkin pie:
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- November 22, 1990: 132 yards rushing, 2 touchdowns.
- November 26, 1992: 120 yards rushing, 41 yards receiving, 2 touchdowns.
- November 24, 1994: 133 yards rushing, 95 yards receiving, 2 touchdowns.
- November 26, 1998: 3 touchdowns.
- November 25, 1999: 103 yards rushing.
- November, 28, 2002: 144 yards rushing.
Smith’s Turkey Day career totals were as tasty as your mom’s stuffing—we’re talking 270 carries for an 1,178 yards (an NFL T-giving best) and 13 touchdowns (also an NFL T-giving best). Yeah, yeah, we know the Cowboys played pretty much every Thanksgiving so Emmitt had more opportunities to rack up numbers than pretty much anybody, but still.
When you dive into Smith’s numbers, Thanksgiving and beyond, it generally leads to a GOAT discussion, as in, who’s the greatest running back of all time? Walter Payton? Jim Brown? Barry Sanders?
Here’s Mr. 10K’s take:
“If you really want to have a legitimate conversation about the best running back in National Football League history, or the best player in NFL history, then you have to create the criteria. And if you create the criteria, then anybody who’s chiming in can give you their true opinion. Because now you have something you can actually gauge it against. So I think they are just doing it to create a conversation in the marketplace. I’m not going to overly concern myself with it. Because at the end of the day, eighteen three fifty-five speaks for itself. One hundred sixty-four speaks for itself.”
And those 5.68 miles—bruising, sweaty, painful miles—also most definitely speak for themselves.
Alan Goldsher is Collectable’s Head of Content and the author of 16 books. For more information, visit http://www.AlanGoldsher.com.
Dig Deeper
Take an even deeper dive
THE LEGEND BEING LEGENDARY
Smith’s career highlights
ONE, TWO, CHA CHA CHA
Emmitt on Dancing With the Stars
GOLDEN JACKETS AND TEARS
Smith’s Hall of Fame speech
