Jim Dent, being held in the Collin County jail without bail, will go before a district judge next week for sentencing on his ninth and 10th convictions for DWI. He also faces charges of bail jumping and failure to appear in court — crimes that carry a sentence of up to 10 years in prison. Dent also faces sentencing in Williamson County. (Andy Jacobsohn/Staff Photographer)

The best-selling sports author’s passion for alcohol has landed him behind bars repeatedly since 1983. Whether intoxicated, incarcerated, on probation or on the run, he’s churned out book after book on Johnny Manziel, the Cowboys and the Sooners, among others. Sober for over 2 months and vowing to stay that way, he’s in the Collin County jail and facing years’ more time. On the run after pleading guilty to the most recent in a long line of drunken-driving charges, Jim Dent still found time to promote his latest book on quarterback Johnny Manziel. Dent, a best-selling author, was free on bond while facing a third trip to state prison when he took off in late January 2014. He believed a Collin County judge would sentence him to eight years after his ninth and 10th convictions for driving while intoxicated. About to disappear with his freedom was the celebrity lifestyle that seemed to afford him carte blanche and endless drinks at open bars around the Texas sports scene. His persona helped him land a previous book deal that came with the blessing of the official Super Bowl organizing committee. He produced a glossy coffee table book that chronicled North Texas’ long effort in staging America’s biggest party. A few years ago you didn’t have to look hard to find photos of Dent. There he was posing in 2011 with Roger Staubach, chairman of the North Texas Super Bowl XLV Host Committee. In 2012, he was writing an essay for The New York Times on the greatness of Darrell Royal after the University of Texas football coach’s death. And finally, a little more than a week before he vanished, Dent’s smiling face was front and center in a community newspaper photo surrounded by wide-eyed Highland Park Middle School students at a book reading club. Cowboys legend Roger Staubach, chairman of the North Texas Super Bowl XLV Host Committee, mugged for the camera with Dent in 2011. Two of Dent’s books were published that year, and he also completed the parole related to his state prison sentence. (Facebook) You could see Dent then. Now you won’t. Soon after Dent disappeared, private investigators dispatched by an aggrieved bail bondswoman searched for him as he evaded arrest warrants in Collin and Williamson counties. The investigators finally located Dent in Mexico. In one attempt to lure Dent back to the U.S. for a quick arrest, Williamson County bondswoman Jessica Zak hired a woman to befriend him online as a prospective paramour. Dent wouldn’t bite. Zak had given up on Dent being brought to justice and was prepared to write off her losses on the $20,000 bond. Then, on Jan. 26, Dent was nabbed by agents with U.S. Customs and Border Protection at the Otay Mesa Port of Entry in San Diego. He tried to recross the U.S.-Mexico border almost a year to the day after he fled because he said he found himself trapped in his own prison of excess depression fueled by his binge drinking. And so Dent, 62, is being held in Collin County jail without bail on the DWI charges. He faces additional felony charges of bail jumping and failure to appear in court. Those charges carry a sentence of up to 10 years in prison if he is convicted. Dent is again scheduled to go before a district judge Thursday for sentencing on the DWI charges. When that’s over, he could be sent to Williamson County for sentencing on a similar charge. “I realize now I have no one to blame but myself,” he said Wednesday afternoon, while sitting on the wrong side of a glass partition in a jailhouse interview. A guard watched his every move.

Sportswriter and best-selling author Jim Dent is being held without bail in the Collin County jail while he awaits sentencing. “I realize now I have no one to blame but myself,” Dent said. (Andy Jacobsohn/Staff Photographer)

Making it in Mexico Before reality struck, Dent hunkered down along Mexico’s Baja Coast just up the road from the more trendy resort city of Cabo San Lucas. There, Dent made himself available for telephone interviews with radio stations across the United States as well as television’s NFL Network to help sell his 11th book, Manziel Mania. The book focuses on the star-crossed Manziel of Texas A&M. The hard-living Heisman Trophy winner had grown into a sports icon. He was selected in the first round of the 2014 NFL Draft by the Cleveland Browns after the Dallas Cowboys famously considered him but passed. Dent, a former sports writer for newspapers in Dallas and Fort Worth, hoped the Manziel book would follow the likes of his previous best-sellers. His first hit was also A&M-related. The Junction Boys reached The New York Times best-seller list and became an ESPN television movie. His UT-themed Courage Beyond The Game, whose film rights he sold, already has been made into a movie but not yet released. The biggest splash may be yet to come. His Fort Worth high school-themed feel-good, Twelve Mighty Orphans, is, according to scuttlebutt, destined for Hollywood’s big screen. But Dent has sold those film rights and is out of the financial picture should the movie strike it big. All along the publicity trail for Manziel Mania, Dent acted as his own agent. The Manziel book originally had been contracted to his publisher, New York’s prestigious St. Martin’s Press. But the preoccupied author missed his deadline. Former University of Texas football coach Darrell Royal, Jim Dent and screenwriter/producer Angelo Pizzo have lunch at The County Line in Austin in 2012. (Facebook) Instead, Dent self-published his work online and used an untraceable Internet phone service as his publicity bullhorn. Dent said he lived in Mexico on $20,000 he was picking up from sales of the Manziel book. He also had the money from movie rights from the previous books. He said he earned $40,000 more from a group of investors for his work on a movie script about Highland Park legends Doak Walker and Bobby Layne. A member of the group, citing what he said was a confidentiality agreement among investors and Dent, asked not to be identified but confirmed the deal. Hiding in plain sight on Facebook, Dent couldn’t resist puffing his chest. In a post last Aug. 19, he proclaimed, “I have been doing the sports talk show circuit from Los Angeles to New York since dawn. ... [Manziel Mania] is the No. 1-selling sports book in America and it’s been out TWO days ... ” The next month, The Cleveland Plain Dealer ran on its website a five-part series dedicated to Manziel Mania, all under Dent’s byline. In print, it offered a fawning sports column that referred to partying proclivities shared by Dent and Manziel. “A player like [Manziel] deserves to have one of the best books about him authored by a man who appreciates him,” wrote Cleveland columnist Bill Livingston, who knows Dent from the days they both worked in Dallas. Livingston painted similarities between Dent and Manziel, whose challenges with alcohol have been well-documented. In his column, Livingston wrote that Dent once had been stopped by Louisiana police for speeding and told to “walk the line.” Dent proved his sobriety by walking a straight line “on his hands, his feet swaying in the cop’s face, his spare change spilling from his pants pockets.” Perhaps it is simply an apocryphal tale. Perhaps it isn’t. It is often difficult to separate fact from fiction when it comes to stories about Dent. But don’t call it Jim Dent mythology. “How about mystique,” Dent suggested with a smile. Fact: As a freshman at SMU, Dent fell out of a third-floor dorm window during a party, only to rejoin it largely unscathed moments later. You don’t have to take his word. Schoolmate Mark Seibel said he was an eyewitness. As a professional journalist, Seibel went on to direct two Pulitzer Prize-winning newspaper reporting teams. Fact or fiction: Opinions differ about where and when Dent published his own newspaper obituary to avoid unsavory debt collectors. Did he use the name Jim Dent? Or Harry James Dent Jr., his given name? Or simply Harry James, which some say he used in gambling circles? Some testify they are certain they saw the obit. Yes, it hung on the wall of one of Dent’s favorite Dallas bars, they say. No, he can’t be sure, says one of the owners. Some say they even discussed it with Dent. They couldn’t have, Dent said. He is adamant he never planted one. Hardest fact of all: Dent has not been as fortunate with police away from the Louisiana stop. He has been convicted of drunken driving in Arkansas, Nevada and Oklahoma as well as the Texas counties of Dallas, Denton and Brazos before the latest convictions in Collin and Williamson. His convictions, which span 32 years, date back to 1983. More than 1.1 million people were arrested for driving under the influence in 2013, according to the latest statistics. And it’s believed that about a third of those arrested or convicted are repeat offenders.

The Dallas Morning News staff writer Michael Granberry (back) served as Jim Dent’s editor while at SMU’s The Daily Campus. “Jim was extremely social. He’d meet people and they would would tell him things,” Granberry recalls of Dent.

News scoops pile up Jim Dent grew up in Arkansas, where he played high school football in suburban Little Rock. A fullback, he had considered trying to walk on the football team at the University of Arkansas. But a bad knee coupled with a relatively small 5-11, 198-pound frame forced him to give up playing. Instead, he turned to sports writing when he arrived at SMU in 1971. He proved a bulldog at the school’s student newspaper. Scoop by scoop, he began earning a reputation at The Daily Campus. The same school year Dent fell out the window, he picked up a tip for what proved to be a big scoop that resonated far beyond campus. The story focused on the SMU golf coach’s refusal to offer a scholarship to a promising high school recruit because he was black. The following year, Dent sniffed out a mutiny in the SMU men’s basketball program. He and Michael Granberry, now a reporter with The Dallas Morning News, reported and wrote a story about two assistant coaches devising a scheme to get rid of the head coach. Granberry says that after Dent discovered something newsworthy, he often opened the conversation with, “I was out, and I heard an incredible story last night …” When Dent became sports editor at the school paper, he put the SMU football program in the crosshairs. His reporting on possible violations became relentless. Scoop begat scoop. Fellow students were not happy. “His real problem is alcoholism. The alcohol has made some bad decisions for Jim.” Don Gardner, friend and SMU classmate of Jim Dent They were so upset, they organized an anti-Dent campus rally in the spring of 1974. Students carried signs and placards that proclaimed, “Get Bent Dent.” What they did not know was the man who wrote the stories was so delighted by the scene that he marched alongside them, chanting in unison. “Jim was in his glory,” Granberry recalled. He said both of his grandfathers were alcoholics. But he insisted neither his late father, Harry James Dent Sr., a Chevrolet truck salesman, nor his mother, Leanna, had any problem. That summer after the protest march, fellow Arkansan Max Woodfin, who had known Dent since childhood and was three years ahead of him at SMU, invited Dent to lazily float down the Buffalo River in Arkansas. Finally, he popped a lingering question. “Are you still battling the bottle?” Woodfin recalled asking his friend. “He said, ‘I’ve reached the point where I can have two beers and quit.’” Woodfin, who would become a journalist, spokesman for Texas Agriculture Commissioner Jim Hightower and speechwriter for former Congresswoman Barbara Jordan, wanted to believe him. “Jim came from a great family,” Woodfin said. “He was great at SMU. … I can’t pretend to understand his alcoholism.” Another SMU friend, Canadian Don Gardner, who hadn’t seen Dent in more than three decades, said he was “brokenhearted” when he learned Dent had been sentenced to prison back in 2003. “His real problem is alcoholism,” said a resigned Gardner, now a criminal court judge in Vancouver. He said he has sentenced “hundreds, if not thousands of impaired drivers.” “The alcohol has made some bad decisions for Jim,” Gardner said.

For Jim Dent, a former sports writer in Dallas and Fort Worth, the string of book successes began in 1995 with King of the Cowboys, a less-than-flattering unauthorized biography of team owner Jerry Jones. (G.J. McCarthy/The Dallas Morning News)

Alcohol for fuel Not only did alcohol fuel Dent’s work at the SMU student paper, it also paved the way to his professional career. After an internship at The News and graduation, Dent made a pit stop in Beaumont before his professional career skyrocketed as he moved to the Dallas Times Herald, Fort Worth Star-Telegram and back to the Times Herald. First in Fort Worth and then in Dallas, he was given the most prestigious of beats: the Cowboys. His tenure began with Tom Landry-led teams and extended past fellow Arkansan Jerry Jones’ purchase of the team in 1989. He wrote reverentially about Landry, not so much about Jones. Jim Dent (second row, white shirt and tie) covered the Cowboys for the Fort Worth Star-Telegram and the Dallas Times Herald. His tenure as a Cowboys beat writer began when the team was coached by Tom Landry (right) and extended past the purchase of the team by Jerry Jones in 1989. (Facebook) When the Times Herald closed in 1991, Dent became a nationally syndicated radio talk show host and an author of books. His first book, King of the Cowboys, a less-than-flattering unauthorized biography of Jones, established him as an author, whetting publishers’ appetites for more. Dent found his niche chronicling period sports stories. He had a talent for relating a good tale even as some of his subjects and other writers publicly contended he allowed his imagination to exaggerate some. Dent said the pressure of publishing deadlines increased his drinking, making for a volatile cocktail. He began picking up a slew of arrests. For the first time in 11 years, he was arrested for DWI in 1994 in the Denton County town of Corinth. Then came a 1997 arrest in Dallas. Convictions followed. A 1999 arrest in College Station came shortly after the release of The Junction Boys. A DWI charge in Texas is a misdemeanor. It graduates to a more severe third-degree felony charge after two previous DWI convictions. A Brazos County judge sentenced Dent to six years’ probation and ordered him to serve 40 days in jail after the College Station arrest.


The day he was released, Dent stopped in Dallas to share a meal with his book agent, Jim Donovan. “I thought College Station would be a wakeup call,” Donovan said. But late that same night, the Oklahoma Highway Patrol arrested Dent for driving drunk. Donovan said there was a time he was “juggling calls from five different lawyers in four different states.” He ultimately parted ways with Dent because of “too many late-night drunken calls.” Donovan estimated that Dent’s biggest hit, The Junction Boys, earned the author somewhere in the neighborhood of $500,000, including the ESPN movie rights. But he never seemed to have enough. Doug Lord, billed in Twelve Mighty Orphans as “one of the mighty mites who ruled Texas high school football” in the 1930s and 1940s, is 87 now. He retired as a colonel in the U.S. Air Force after 9 years of active duty and ran an insurance business in Garland. He said Dent was always welcome at his Dallas home for a few days when he needed a place to stay. The one caveat was no drinking. Lord said the relationship soured soon after “our book was published.” Lord said he loaned $5,000 to get Dent out of jail. “I made you famous. It’s worth $5,000 to you,” Lord recalled Dent saying. Lord replied, “You didn’t need to make me famous.” Although Lord said he never got his money back, he said he “really liked the book” Told that Dent was back in jail in Collin County, Lord said, “Good.”

Author Jim Dent appeared with his lawyer in a Brazos County courtroom where Dent’s probation was revoked in 2002. A Brazos judge later sentenced him to eight years in prison on the violation. (Butch Ireland/Bryan-College Station Eagle)

Where is he? In what has become a pattern, Dent failed to show up for a preliminary hearing in Oklahoma. Texas authorities were looking for him, too. But Dent wasn’t easy to find. Court documents detail the unsuccessful efforts to locate him. Mothers Against Drunk Driving even hired a constable from the Houston area to try to find him. After arrests in Arkansas and Las Vegas, Dent was sent back to Texas, where the Brazos County judge sentenced him to eight years in prison for violating probation. The author promised he would stop drinking and get his life straightened out. He served almost 22 months before he was paroled. A photo from Jim Dent’s book Twelve Mighty Orphans, published in 2007. The book is rumored to be made into a movie. (St. Martin’s Press) He found refuge in Houston, in the mansion of an old SMU fraternity brother. Jeffrey Skilling, the former Enron CEO facing legal woes of his own, welcomed Dent. But less than a year after his release from prison, Dent was arrested again for drunken driving. This time it was in Arkansas. The court suspended a one-year sentence on the condition that Dent complete an alcohol safety program and serve one day of community service. He hasn’t. An arrest warrant remains active. In the midst of his legal troubles, Dent’s Twelve Mighty Orphans was published in 2007. He dedicated the book “to those who stood by me when my life fell apart.” Texas parole officials revoked his Brazos County probation and sent him back to the state prison in Huntsville for almost three months. Dent was released from prison in March 2008. For nearly four years, his criminal record remained clear. He completed his state-ordered parole while writing three more books. “Prison scared the [expletive] out of me,” Dent said from the Collin County jail.

On Jan. 26, 2015, Jim Dent was arrested by U.S. Customs and Border Protection agents at the Otay Mesa Port of Entry in San Diego as he tried to re-cross the U.S.-Mexico border. He now awaits sentencing in the Collin County jail on his ninth and 10th convictions for DWI. (Andy Jacobsohn/Staff Photographer)

Staying in trouble But his fear had a statute of limitations. He was arrested again in January 2012 in a northwest Austin neighborhood nestled in Williamson County. Dent crashed his tan 1994 Cadillac Deville into a tollbooth on State Highway 45. Witnesses told police that the driver abandoned the car. It didn’t take long for a rookie police dog, a Belgian Malinois named Jake, to find Dent hiding behind a bush. Officers noted the strong odor of alcohol on his breath and arrested him. Nine months later, Dent was arrested again for DWI. The arrest came after the writer tried to drag his ex-girlfriend from her car in Allen. Failing that, he rammed his 2008 white Ford F150 pickup truck into her car with such force that it propelled the vehicle into a neighbor’s garage door. Then in May 2013, a caller informed Allen police that he saw a reckless driver in a white 1989 Mercedes-Benz. The caller followed the Mercedes into a Walgreens parking lot while Dent went inside to shop. When Dent walked out of the store carrying a case of beer and a bottle of wine, police were waiting. Dent denied he had been driving. Police found a key to the Mercedes in his pocket. He was arrested. Over the years, authorities used multiple tools to try to get Dent back on the straight and narrow. There were court fines. But he didn’t always pay them. Courts ordered alcohol education, treatment programs and counseling. At one point, Dent said he was in Alcoholics Anonymous. He didn’t stick with any of the treatment. Authorities suspended his driver’s license multiple times. That didn’t stop him from driving. In 2013, Dent petitioned the judge in Collin County to get his driver’s license reinstated. He said he needed to drive so he could work. The judge granted the request, provided Dent get an ignition interlock device installed in his vehicle. The device keeps the vehicle from starting if the driver is drunk. That didn’t keep Dent from trying to drive drunk on more than one occasion. In an effort to punish Dent, Collin County prosecutors seized the two vehicles he used in the Allen arrest. Dent pleaded guilty to two Collin County charges during a hearing in November 2013. As part of his deal, Dent was forbidden to drink any alcohol. He was banned from driving. He was required to get a shot once a month of Vivitrol, a drug that treats alcohol dependence. Dent also was ordered to wear a SCRAM device around his ankle. It measures his perspiration every 30 minutes for blood alcohol levels. Authorities shackled Dent to an electronic monitor to keep track of him. None of it lasted for long. At one point, his attorney in the Williamson County case wrote the court that Dent “apparently removed his electronic monitor, and that the last signal from that monitor was detected somewhere near the Mexican border.”