The Dallas Cowboys signed defensive end Marcus Dixon and guard Ryan Gibbons today.

Both players spent all of the 2008 season on the club's practice squad.

Dixon is an interesting story.

The defensive end came to the Cowboys as an undrafted free-agent from Hampton, where he was a captain and on the Dean's list, on a three-year $1.1 million deal in April.

But he was already nationally-known before that -- not because of what he'd done on the football field, but because of a court case.

Dixon spent 15 months in prison for aggravated child molestation and statutory rape, an incident that came just a few days after he accepted a scholarship to Vanderbilt in 2003.

While the jury believed the sex was consensual, because the girl -- a couple months shy of 16 at the time -- was viewed as underage, according to state law, the jurors found Dixon guilty.

The case became a national story. She is white. He is black. And many states had provisions where sex between two teens would not constitute child molestation.

In 2004, after 15 months, the Georgia Supreme Court ordered his immediate release. The molestation charge was dropped, but not the rape charge. He maintains the sex was consensual, the young woman does not.

After his release, Dixon enrolled at Hampton before joining the Cowboys.

Here's a great article on the entire thing.

As for Gibbons, he was an undrafted free agent signed by the Jacksonville Jaguars in 2006. He's also spent time with the Bears and Buccaneers.

The Northeastern product joined the Cowboys in June.

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