Continuity: A Thing of the Past

I recently had a half-hour long conversation with my father on the Cowboys, our favorite sports franchise. Whenever my pops and I talk football, the conversation always evolves into me grilling dad about the history of the Cowboys, and football in general before I was born. Seriously, the man is a plethora of Cowboy knowledge, and an almanac of pigskin glory.

His America’s Team resume is as follows: He attended the NFL championship game between Dallas and Green Bay in 1967 at the Cotton Bowl when he was eight. Back then, the league didn’t even have the Super Bowl. He saw quarterback greats Don Meredith, Craig Morton, Roger Staubach, and Danny White. He saw the Cowboys reach the playoffs every year up until 1974, and then again until 1984, and then from 1991 to 1998. He witnessed five Dallas Super Bowl championships. Five!

My dad also experienced something that he now yearns for, which is funny to me, because I’ve spent the better half of my football-obsessed life wishing I could have been older than eight when the Cowboys won their final Super Bowl. I don’t remember a thing about the Glory 90’s, other than the occasional Aikman bomb and those God-awful jerseys with the huge blue star on the shoulder. My dad yearns for the days where teams were just that—teams. Amazingly, it was not uncommon for football teams to draft a nucleus of players and keep that team in tact for over ten years. Free agency was almost an unknown commodity, and players focused on winning over making ridiculous amounts of money at the expense of their pride. The Dallas Cowboys had a nucleus of players on their team that lasted from the early 1960’s to the Cowboys first Super Bowl season in 1974. Back then, teams would replace one player here and another player there, usually spaced out by year. For the most part, your team was your team. And for the Cowboys, it worked.

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I might be a biased fan, but seriously. Look at this list of players: Bob Lilly. Roger Staubach. Craig Morton. Ed ‘Too Tall’ Jones. Jethro Pugh. Randy White. Bob Hayes. Tony Dorsett. Drew Pearson. Rayfield Wright. Troy Aikman. Emmitt Smith. Michael Irvin. Larry Allen. Mike Ditka. Mel Renfro. Lee Roy Jordan. Calvin Hill. My God. I just blacked out. My dad saw all of these players, in their primes, on the Cowboys for an extended period of time. Imagine waking up every Sunday during football season for twelve years and counting on four or five of those guys playing every down.

I understand parity in the NFL. It keeps everyone interested. It gives every team optimism going into the next year. With the growth of and emphasis placed on free agency, as well as the NFL Draft being based on the team’s previous-season record, a team like the Dolphins can go from 1-15 to 11-5 and win their division within one year, and the Jets can sign a Brett Favre to a contract and immediately become a contender, and the Patriots can go video-game on the league and acquire Randy Moss and Wes Welker for late-round draft picks, and the freaking Cardinals can make the Super Bowl. Parity is a wonderful thing.

But when I sit in the kitchen, chatting with dad about the legacy of the Cowboys and the continuity and consistency of the players and it almost looks like he’s fighting back tears—well, you think about things. As much of a tool as he was, I got three seasons out of Terrell Owens, one of the best receivers of all time, before he bolted. Smart drafting may have actually screwed the Cowboys, since the aforementioned free agency is going to lure one of Dallas’s three stud running-backs away some day. (I hope its Tashard Choice. Love the guy to death, but Felix Jones is going to be a superstar. I digress.) DeMarcus Ware is deservedly going to demand a Godfather contract, which Dallas should give him, but will kill their cap space in the process. It’s so complicated now.

All I can do is wait for my favorite sport team to deliver me a championship, no matter how far over the salary cap they are, or how depleted of draft picks they may be, or how full of no-named guys they may be. In the meantime, I’ll live vicariously through my dad. Tomorrow, I’m asking him about the ’77 team.

By: Timothy Glaze
ProFootball-fans.com Dallas Cowboys Correspondent

For more of Randy's work check out FootballDogz.com where he is the Chief Writer!