Emmitt Smith

After the game, Smith was in such severe pain that he thought he was having a heart attack. He spent a night in the hospital, but took part in three playoff games, including that year's Super Bowl; he was chosen as MVP of the Super Bowl after rushing for 132 yards and scoring two second-half touchdowns. Smith was also named Sporting News Sportsman of the Year in 1994. He told Attner that he played despite the injury because "You have players relying on you. I didn't want to let them down." When asked whether winning was worth the pain, Smith replied, "It would be kind of hard to say I would do it again…. But we won. That felt great."

In 1996, the Cowboys won the Super Bowl for a third time, defeating the Pittsburgh Steelers 27-17. In that same year, Smith, who had dropped out of college after his junior year to play football, completed his degree in public recreation. He had attended classes during the off-season to complete his education, because he had once promised his mother that he would get a degree. "I've always been a man of my word," Smith explained to a reporter in Time for Kids. "It was super important to me."

Smith continued to play at a high level, earning Pro Bowl honors in 1997, 1998, and 1999. But the team's play began to suffer. When the Cowboys did poorly in 2000 and 2001, Smith wrote a letter to his teammates, whose morale was slumping. He asked them all to train harder during the off-season, saying that if they were tired of losing, they should be willing to make sacrifices and work hard in order to win. In 2000, Smith married Patricia Southall Lawrence, a former beauty queen. They would later have three children.

At the end of the 2001 season, Smith had under 1,000 yards to go in order to break the all-time rushing record, set by Hall-of-Famer Walter Payton of the Chicago Bears, with 16,726. Smith believed he could set a new record. In an interview in Sports Illustrated for Kids, Smith said, "One thing I have no control over is injuries. But I've done all I can to prepare myself on the football field." Smith said that when he broke the record, he would be "so emotional," and commented, "It is something that my heart has been set on since I became a professional athlete."

Smith told a Sports Illustrated for Kids reporter that he planned to dedicate the 2002 season to Walter Payton. "I love him like my own father and my own teammates. He is a part of me, and I'm a part of him. There is no way I could find myself on the football field without thinking of him." Smith had met Payton in 1995, and Payton had told him that he had a chance to break the record. The two men became friends, and supported each other during times when Smith was injured or when Payton became terminally ill with liver disease. Payton died in 1999, and Smith became a mentor to Payton's son Jarrett, also a football player.