The Lite Football Team
Dallas Cowboys sponsored by LITE beer. What a perfect pair. Watered down party piss in a cheap tin can.
The baffling mystery of our time is — how is this mismanaged debacle ranked as the world’s most valuable sports franchise for the 19th consecutive year — estimated by Forbes at a whopping $15.5 billion? Fact is, Dallas is pitiful. Last time the Cowboys won a Super Bowl was during the previous century, in 1995. Even worse, this franchise hasn’t reached a conference championship game in 30+ years. Dallas is the only team in the NFC that hasn’t made the NFL’s final four in three-plus decades.
So, what makes this franchise so valuable? Are the Cowboys simply the McDonalds, the Chevrolets, the Lites of pro football? It sure seems that way. All these shitty products rank at the bottom of any comparison to far-better burgers, cars, and beer. It’s success by volume, profit by familiarity.
Sports economics is a whole different discussion, of course, but fact is — Dallas Cowboys fans are mindlessly delusional. They’ve been buying mediocrity and cheering underachievement for 30 straight years, packing a poorly-designed stadium (recall the sun controversy — why does this team always have problems with sun and shade?), wearing the overpriced jerseys, and expecting a Super Bowl appearance every season. Instead, fans should be chanting insults at the games. Point and scream straight at the owners luxury box, instead of treating Jerry Jones like a celebrity — but sadly, that’s the sick twisted culture we live in now when even the most despicable men of wealth are admired and treated like rock stars and royalty. Some even get elected President. Again, that’s a whole another discussion (and one worth having).
Seriously, Jerry Jones and everyone in his family attached to this team in any decision-making capacity should be chauffeured in an armored car. One time back in the late 1960s, legendary quarterback Don Meredith complained that when he went into a local restaurant people who were eating started booing. It got so bad, he had to leave. While that was a bit excessive given Meredith’s toughness in undeniable success as a Cowboy icon, that’s the sort of thing that *should* be happening around Dallas right now–anytime the Jones clan makes a public appearance. Stop treating them like celebrities.
To be clear, I do enjoy seeing the Cowboys lose. But it wasn’t always that way. In fact, I saw my first pro football game at the Cotton Bowl and my parents had season tickets at Texas Stadium, where I saw every game. I defy anyone to find a bigger Dallas fan when the glory days of Landry and Staubach were winning Super Bowls, or at least getting to conference championship games. The Cowboys reached the NFC title game 12 times in just 17 years, including 7 NFL championship games. Dallas Cowboys since 1996……zero.
After another embarrassing Cowboys loss last night (the team had 10 days to prepare and was hopelessly UNprepared, down 17-0 at halftime), the brainless fans are now blaming the quarterback, the coaches, the water boy, and the bus driver. Yeah, there’s plenty of blame to go around. But, so long as the suckers and sheep buying the $300 tickets wave pom poms in a 95,000 seat packed stadium each and every Sunday and ignore the real problem *upstairs* who is a blathering excuse factory, disappointment and misery will continue. Reap what you sew.
Way back in 1996, when Jerry Jones burned through his second Super Bowl winning head coach in three years and hastily decided to hire a blubber-brained sock puppet named Chan Gailey -after meeting him just one time for 45 minutes- I was stunned and wrote on an internet forum that Dallas wouldn’t win another Super Bowl for the next generation. Admittedly, that prediction was over-the-top hyperbolic. Well, maybe not. It came true.
For Cowboys fans who are hopeful that Jerry Jones getting old (he’s 84) eventually leads to a handoff of football decisions to his witless spawn, that prospect should be even more alarming. At least JJ is a self-made man, and certainly a brilliant business icon. He’s good at something, even if it’s football snake oil. As a football manager, he sucks. And his son, who’s never accomplished anything on his own, might be even worse.
Lite beer may want to re-think its sponsorship.
