That he has arrived at this station in life, now just 93 yards shy of the record coveted by every player who has ever pulled on a pair of football cleats at any level of the game, is more a testimony to Emmitt Smith's perseverance than to his pizzazz.

Far more gritty than glamorous, built like a jackhammer and not a jet, no one has ever accused Smith of being the prettiest running back ever to play in the NFL. Come Sunday evening, however, he will likely be the most prolific runner ever.

	Emmitt Smith needs 93 more yards to break Walter Payton's rushing record.

And so while he has crawled painfully this season toward Walter Payton's all-time rushing mark, his per-game average in 2002 more than 25 percent below the standard he established in his first dozen campaigns, even Smith will acknowledge it might be fitting that the mark has arrived in spasmodic three- and four-yard bursts and not with a string of long runs.

During training camp Smith allowed that he regarded the rushing record as akin to the heavyweight championship. This week, he revisited the allegory to suggest that title belts are characteristically won with the jab, and not the haymaker right. So perhaps it is apropos that, if Smith supplants Payton on Sunday afternoon against a Seattle Seahawks defense that has surrendered the most rushing yards in the NFL this year, he gain the title with a run of about four yards.

"To me, the record is about being able to go out every Sunday and perform at a consistent level, about showing up week after week and year after year and maintaining a desire to do things well," said Smith. "It's about wanting to do it. And I have definitely wanted to do it. This has been a goal."

Actually, the rushing record has been more like a Holy Grail for Smith, who has not been shy this season about discussing his quest. As a rookie in 1990, Smith sat in his Irving, Tex., apartment one evening and scribbled out a lofty goal on a scrap of paper. Several years later, he had the yellowing reminder laminated, and it recently was unearthed from a closet.

Essentially, in just a few pithy sentences, Smith set his course in writing. And 13 years later, with his words transformed into a nonpareil work ethic, he is on the cusp of turning a dream into reality. Notable is that the record could fall on a day when the Cowboys hope to introduce their quarterback of the future by featuring on offense a player who has embodied the halcyon past of a suddenly fading franchise.

That his first regular-season start since his sophomore year at Stanford will come on such a momentous occasion has not been lost on rookie quarterback Chad Hutchinson, who replaces Quincy Carter this week, and who figures to be the man who hands the ball to Smith on a play that will be repeated many times Sunday night on highlight reels. Like the hundreds of Dallas rookies who preceded him during Smith's tenure with the club, Hutchinson is awed by the tailback's relentless work ethic, inspired by the attention to detail that still drives the future Hall of Fame back.

This has not been, by any account, the easiest season of Smith's career. Not with a new offense, a line battered by injury and baffled by that new zone-blocking design installed by first-year assistant Frank Verducci, not with all the locker room whispers that it might be time for caddy Troy Hambrick to assume the starting spot, not with the questions over his future.

Bothered by the losing more than the myriad diversions, Smith has come to work everyday as focused as ever, the consummate professional.

"He's like the guy who punches the time clock, gives you an honest day's work, and knows it," said Hutchinson.

Indeed, that assessment epitomizes his professional career, one in which the 33-year-old Smith has missed only five games to injury. Running backs at the NFL level are not often, particularly in this era, seen as workmanlike. But the tireless Smith has been yeoman-like in carrying out his duties, and in carrying the ball, usually into the teeth of a waiting defense.

Asked to rate the best running back in the history of the league, most experts and even players place Smith somewhere around the middle of the top 10, usually below more aesthetically pleasing runners. Queried about the toughest backs, however, and Smith typically rates close to the top of such a roll call.

Five that stand out

Oct. 31, 1993: On a rainy afternoon in Philadelphia, Smith turns 30 carries into 237 yards, sixth-best in league history at the time, a team record and still his career high. What had been an above-average game turned memorable with a 62-yard touchdown on his final carry. Jan. 2, 1994: Facing the Giants with the NFC East title and home-field advantage in the playoffs on the line, Smith plays through a separated shoulder to produce 229 of Dallas' 339 yards by getting the ball on 42 of 70 snaps of the season finale. Sept. 4, 1995: With the Cowboys having ended their two-year run as champions, Smith runs 60 yards for a TD on his first carry of the season. He scores four times en route to an NFL-record 25. Nov. 28, 1996: While enduring the most miserable season of his career, Smith has season highs of 155 yards and three touchdowns in a Thanksgiving game against archrival Washington. He goes over 1,000 yards for the sixth straight season and tops 10,000 for his career. Nov. 8, 1999: Again on a Monday night, Smith blisters Minnesota for 140 yards on 13 carries, including scoring runs of 63 and 24 yards just 18 seconds apart, the fastest anyone has ever had consecutive TDs. But a fractured bone sustained while stiff-arming a defender on the long run knocks him out of the game after just 24 minutes. -- The Associated Press

No one will ever forget his performance of Jan. 2, 1994, when he accounted for 229 of his team's 339 yards in a must-win season finale against the New York Giants. He played more than half of an overtime game with a shoulder that was separated and a throbbing knee, and virtually willed the Cowboys to a victory that secured the division title. Smith touched the ball on 42 of the Cowboys 70 snaps, running 32 times for 168 yards, catching 10 passes for 62 more yards.

The Giants coach at the time, Dan Reeves termed it "one of the greatest tests of determination I've ever seen," but allowed recently that he anticipated no less from Smith, a performer "with great passion for the game."

But if that game served as the most memorable Kodak moment of Smith's pro career, then his tenure in the league has been a long Super 8 collection of such gutty snippets. Unlike the runner who was supposed to have broken Payton's record, the reclusive Barry Sanders, who ran away from the mark and not toward it, Smith is not a human highlight reel of long soirees though slower secondaries.

Put even one videocassette of a Smith game into the tape player, darken the lights, and what plays out over the screen is a montage of collisions. It is a human carnage, with Smith propelling himself time after time into a defense and usually moving the ball forward four or five yards. Occasionally there is a moment of separation, when Smith pokes out the long side of a hole and into the secondary, but largely it is him slashing toward immortality.

In a sense it is that relentless sameness, a testament to rote and righteousness, that most pleases Smith as he is poised to assume a title that is more about longevity than it is long runs.

That it not to say, though, that he gained the record simply hanging around. There is a school of thought that records in some sports are thus achieved. But the NFL is a league where running backs play an average of fewer than three seasons, according to an NFL Players Association report, and where the guys who tote the ball for their livelihood usually retire to the rocking chair with creaky knees.

If the marvelous Smith has endured, it is because he has made himself into an indispensable player, not a hanger-on. Even this season, when coaches and teammates have privately grumbled about the focus on the record, he is averaging 4.2 yards per carry, merely one-tenth of a yard below his career mark, one of the best averages ever for an over-30 running back.

"When you think (of Payton)," said Smith, "you think of him powering into the defense, of moving people back, not the long, fluid runs. You think of him eroding a defense, of hitting it up in there time and time and time again. He did it the hard way and, I think, so have I. That's the mark of a runner with heart. The ability to keep hammering away, you know?"

If all the years of hammering finally breaks down the wall on Sunday, there will be a tremendous sense of satisfaction for Smith, who began his football career begging his peewee coach to allow him to play quarterback. From the moment that coach pointed Smith toward the tailback spot, however, there has been a single-mindedness of purpose.

The inexorable quest, the tireless pursuit of greatness, the search for total validation will culminate in the fulfillment of Smith's dream. There is no subjectivity -- not the kind inherent in any unscientific assessment of the greatest runners in NFL history -- attached to numbers. And come Sunday evening, if things go according to plan, the numbers won't lie.

"To say you've rushed for more yards than anyone else, in a sport that is as brutal as this one, that speaks for itself," said Dallas safety and longtime Smith friend Darren Woodson. "To say you did it at such a high level, and for so many years, well, that's remarkable. Then again, that's Emmitt."

Len Pasquarelli is a senior writer for ESPN.com.