One was enough for Duane Thomas.

Thomas' economy of language was so memorable, in fact, that to some it overshadowed his performance.

Thomas rushed for 95 yards and scored on a three-yard run in the Dallas Cowboys' 24-3 victory over the Miami Dolphins in Super Bowl VI.

After the game, CBS Sports analyst Tom Brookshier said to him, "Duane, you do things with speed, but you never really hurry a lot, like the great Jim Brown. You never hurry into a hole. You take your time, make a spin, yet you still outrun people. Are you that fast? Are you quick, would you say?"

After pausing for a few seconds -- an eternity on live TV -- Thomas replied: "Evidently."

It was one of the few moments of levity in Thomas' brief, troubled career with the Cowboys. He helped Dallas to the Super Bowl in 1970 and 1971 but was traded in 1972 in the midst of a contract dispute.

Along the way, he described Cowboys general manager Tex Schramm as "sick, demented and totally dishonest" -- "Well, he got two out of three," Schramm replied -- and coach Tom Landry as "a plastic man."

Angered by what he thought was an unfair contract, Thomas refused to speak to coaches and the media in 1971. And he remains bitter over elements of his second Super Bowl season.

"When people bring up the game, what they normally say is that I should have been the MVP of the Super Bowl," Thomas said in a recent telephone interview. "There was a lot of controversy about how the Cowboys manipulated the voting to give the award to Roger Staubach.

"A lot of it had to do with me being a black player. They wanted to be a lily-white America's Team. That was their image."

Thomas' image has been that of the angry young man battling the establishment. But Thomas said he always found peace in the game.

"What the game meant to me at that particular point was setting a goal and accomplishing it," he said. "The differences you may have had, the controversies, tend to be insignificant.

"I recall those things, but the main thrust of what I remember is the meaning of friendship, the meaning of teamwork and dealing with adversity and accomplishing the goal. That was what it was all about with me. I was at peace with myself, even with everything that was going on."

Thomas was born in Dallas but lived for several years in Los Angeles before returning to attend high school. He has lived outside Texas since 1979 and has been "sort of distant from football" over the years, he said.

He also had distanced himself from his roots until recently, when he returned to Dallas from his home near San Diego to be inducted in the Texas Black Sports Hall of Fame.

"The most interesting thing about that trip was to meet players who had played before and had laid the groundwork," Thomas said. "It gave me some new horizons going back to the Dallas area in terms of football. It was a groundbreaking visit."

Quietly, he's had several such experiences over the years. One of the most gratifying, he said, involved Lee Roy Jordan, who played for Bear Bryant at Alabama and was the Cowboys' middle linebacker for more than a decade.

"Lee Roy called me a few years after I left the Cowboys and said he wanted to have lunch with me," Thomas said. "He said, `Duane, you know, when you were on the team, I disagreed with everything you said and did. But things have happened to me in my life, and I have a new perspective now.' "

"It was a very emotional moment for me. I had always respected Lee Roy as a player, and as a man he solidified everything I felt about him."

That conversation, Thomas said, summed up everything he thought about the concept of team.

"We all come with idiosyncrasies and dysfunctions and prejudices, but we unite on the basis of what we had in common," he said. "That commonality was the Dallas Cowboys.

"So what Lee Roy said moved me so. I gained so much respect for him. He had been influenced by the atmosphere in Dallas at the time we played, but because of episodes he had outside of the game, he was able to see me in a clear light. He understood that I was there like he was, to perform and make money.

And Thomas said has been contacted by others who have made amends with their old teammate's viewpoints.

"Later on, another player approached me and said, `Duane, I had no idea about this or that.' They thought the way they did at the time because they were tied up with their own issues."

Thomas has even reconciled with Landry.

"He dealt with things at the time in the best way he could," Thomas said. "I accepted that so I could move on. There was no need in me staying angry at him.

"I couldn't have gone to two Super Bowls if it hadn't been for the personality of Tom Landry. And so this has all been worth it for me in terms of the experience. What you take with you is what you learn from experiences that help you grow mentally, psychologically and spiritually."