Romo Is the Hero Dallas Deserves
January 1, 2013
By J.D. Cook
If I have to hear another excuse for the Dallas Cowboys, I’m going to ban sports media from my television. I do not know why the sports media (NFL Network and ESPN) love the Dallas Cowboys so much. Perhaps it’s because they have the biggest fan base in America due to whatever marketing team dubbed them “America’s Team” in the 1970s. This moniker is, of course, ridiculous considering they are the quintessential “Texas Team”. The Patriots who won the super bowl in the 2001 football season after 9-11 may be more deserving of being dubbed “America’s Team”, or perhaps Green Bay or Pittsburgh due to their historic accomplishments. That discussion is for another day though. Today’s discussion is set for the “Cult of the Cowboys” in the sports media.
Leading up to last Sunday, all I heard on every channel was “Dallas vs. Washington to decide the playoffs”, “Dallas vs. Washington will be the best game of the season”, “Dallas vs. Washington will be the best game ever”, etc. There were of course other games that were equally important to playoff seeding and no amount of hype can actually make a game great – the Green Bay vs. Minnesota game was far more entertaining than Dallas vs. Washington. The game was also being advertised as a huge showdown between teams on equal footing, except it was fairly obvious going into the game that Dallas was not nearly as good as Washington. Not only had Washington already beaten Dallas recently but last year Dallas lost the division in the exact same manner to the New York Giants and the season before that, they were 6-10. So my question to the sports media is; “why the heck weren’t the Redskins billed as the definite favorite?”
So the game came and went and the outcome was exactly as I predicted. The up-and-coming Washington Redskins trumped the Dallas Cowboys. Why did this happen? The Dallas Cowboys..are just not that good! They have not been very good for the last ten years! Every season they are billed as the team to beat, and every year they aren’t. Unfortunately, everyone hears them billed as a top team and I can guarantee you that 31 other teams in the NFL always want to beat the Cowboys a little more than other teams in the league because of this. Then as if to make up for the inflated reputation they give Dallas, the sports media then spends the entire off-season apologizing and making excuses for this team.
They got started early this year as the minute that Dallas lost to Washington, stories about how sad it was that Tony Romo couldn’t win the big game started to appear. Suddenly Romo has become the fall guy for the sports media’s given reputation to Dallas. It was only a matter of time really. Every season the sports media was able to blame something or someone else until finally they landed on Romo. It is kind of sad because Romo seems like a nice enough guy and he is a decent quarterback. but the sports media needs its sacrifice to keep the illusion of the Dallas Cowboys supremacy alive and this year Romo’s number might just be up because the sports media can’t just admit the plain simple truth that the Dallas Cowboys just aren’t that damn good!
They’d rather live in a lie for the sake of placating the egos of Dallas fans then admit the journalistic truth. I’d like to believe this is not because Dallas is the biggest generator of revenue in the Sports world but I am not that naïve. I can’t wait to see what excuse the Sports Media comes up with if the Cowboys suck next year.
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Tuesday Morning Tailback is a weekly article during football season which take a critical look at the NFL. We do this from the base belief that NFL football is the greatest game in the history of mankind, but some recent policies and the overall direction of the league has chipped away at this greatness. Our primary goal is to spark debate on these subjects, so please leave your own opinion on this article in the comment box below.
