It has been 16 years since the Dallas Cowboys beat the Pittsburgh Steelers in Super Bowl XXX. In those sixteen years, the Cowboys have made the playoffs just seven times. In those seven playoff appearances, they have managed to win but two games.

On January 1, 2012, the Cowboys needed to get one win at home against the New York Giants. Just one win and they would be NFC East champions and playoff bound. Of course, the Giants clobbered the Cowboys 31–14 and took the first step towards the unlikeliest Super Bowl triumph since the last time the G-men won the Super Bowl.

The game that catapulted the Giants into history relegated the Cowboys to ancient history. The team that was once considered the shining star, the flagship franchise of America’s greatest professional sports league is now all but irrelevant.

During the sixteen years since their last taste of glory, the Cowboys have wandered aimlessly through the Wilderness of Mediocrity. They have employed six head coaches and been led by seven different quarterbacks. But the man with the compass, the fearless leader of this ill-fated expedition is the only general manager the team has ever had under owner Jerry Jones.

That would be GM Jerry Jones.

Jones and those in his deluded company may console themselves by saying, “Look! The team that beat us to get into the playoffs won the Super Bowl.”

Bitter fans, however, will be incensed and say, “Look! The team that beat us to get into the playoffs won the Super Bowl.”

What Jerry sees as hopeful, the discouraged, disheartened, distrustful fan will see as hopeless.

Ah, Jerry Jones.

Here is a fellow that says, “Come with me. I know the way.”

But he keeps changing the map, altering the direction and getting nowhere. Long ago, it became painfully apparent to anyone paying attention that Jerry Jones does not know the way, he cannot read a map and when it comes to building and guiding a successful NFL franchise, he is as lost as a goose in the desert.

Meanwhile the Roman numerals keep rolling. Each passing Super Bowl is another mile marker along the Lost Highway for the driver that has no idea how to get there and is too stubborn to ask directions of anyone that does.

Somewhere a coyote howls, a tumbleweed ambles aimlessly across the lonesome prairie and Jerry Jones studies his map.

The Dallas Cowboys are under new ownership, and have been for awhile now.

No, I am not reporting that the Jones family has sold one of the world’s most valuable sports franchises. The ownership exchange has not been the result of an asset exchange. It has been more of a hostile takeover.

Let me explain.

Andy Reid owns the Dallas Cowboys

In 13 seasons as head coach of the Philadelphia Eagles, Reid has posted a 17–9 record versus America’s Former Team. While the Cowboys have ventured past the first round of the playoffs but once in that span, Reid’s Eagles have won seven division titles, played in five NFC championship games and been to one Super Bowl.

Oh, by the way, the Cowboys have plowed through five coaches in those 13 years. They have, however, kept the same GM. Apparently, owner Jerry Jones is willing to let coach Andy Reid dominate his team year after year, just as long as GM Jerry Jones gets to keep deluding himself into believing he is a competent “football man.”

The thing Jones is most proud of these days is his shiny new $1.2 billion play pretty in Arlington. But he doesn’t own that, either.

Eli Manning owns Cowboys Stadium

The Giants were the Cowboys’ first-ever opponent in the new stadium. Eli & Company spoiled the grand opening by beating the Cowboys. Eli would add insult to that injury by signing the locker room wall after the game.

“First win in the new stadium,” Eli wrote.

It would not be his last. Manning has posted a 3–0 record in Arlington.

Manning is not the only Cowboys opponent enjoying success in the place ESPN analyst Chris Carter called, “That night club the Dallas Cowboys call a football stadium.” The Cowboys’ overall record (to date) in the new stadium is 14–11. That amounts to a .56 winning percentage, barely above .500.

Of course, the underwhelming performance in the new stadium has everything to do with the teams Jones and his cronies have fielded and little or nothing to do with the new digs.

December owns Tony Romo and his Dallas Cowboys

For Tom Landry, December was important. The legendary coach that lead his team to 20 straight winning seasons, five Super Bowl appearances and two Lombardi trophies talked about streaking into the playoff. He put emphasis on playing your best football when it counted most.

Romo would, apparently, disagree with Landry. The current Cowboys QB has posted a December record  8–13. But he feels like people that pay attention to that sort of thing are just silly.

John Machota of DallasNews.com quotes Romo on the subject:

“The problem with December sometimes is I don’t know how many times you’re out of the playoffs, in the playoffs,” Romo said. “That stuff plays a role. Sometimes you’re sitting starters. Sometimes you don’t. Sometimes you’ve got Philly, Baltimore and the Giants to finish the year.

“You need to make it over 15 years is what you need to do, not four or five years. It’s just silly. Any stat you can make over a short period of time. That’s four games. Stats are just stuff, in that regard, they come and go with whatever’s in vogue recently.”

See? Stop worrying about how the Cowboys perform in December, you silly ol’ fan.

Who really owns the Dallas Cowboys? Jerry Jones does, of course! And he does not care how far into the ground he has to grind the once-proud franchise in order to prove it is his team and he will run it his way.

And so, if you are that lifelong fan that refers to the Dallas Cowboys as “my team,” you will just have to come to the stark realization these are not your Daddy’s Cowboys. They are not yours, either.

These Cowboys belong to Jerry “Blankety-Blank” Jones…and Andy Reid…and Eli Manning…and the cold, lonely howl of a lost December.

Now that the tenth anniversary of 9/11 is done and we are no longer “all New Yorkers,” the good Texans can get back to being bitter about their team losing a game they were supposed to lose, but never should have lost.

Your Dallas Cowboys once again began an NFL season with a near-miss.

According to Tony Dungy, Rodney Harrison and Tyrannosaurus Rex Ryan, the Cowboys were supposed to lose to the New York Jets and lose big. None of them saw what was coming, because what was coming was a better team than Team Green. A better offense. A better coaching staff. A better game plan. A better quarterback…

Well, wait. Check that. The quarterback thing: Let me retract that. More talented? Yes. Better? Not so much.

So, who to blame?

Tony Romo is an obvious choice. First, he fumbles on the goal line, trying to make more out of a play than was there. This at a time when a field goal would have done just fine. Then, after the defense made a valiant stand to get him the ball and an opportunity to win the game in the waning minutes, he hit a wide open Darelle Revis right between the numbers.

This will have many saying, “Same ol’ same ol’.”

Or, “See? Romo sucks!”

We could blame the punt team. Or its coach: Joe DeCamillis. NFL teams are not supposed to give up a blocked punt to someone charging right up the gut.

A militant few will blame Jason Garrett just because he is redheaded or something like that. Those people I pay no attention to because they obviously do not know great coaching material when they see it.

I am going to go ahead and let my favorite punching bag share some of the blame. You know him as the man with the common name and the uncommon ability to turn the simplest communication into utter nonsense.

I am talking about the man whose commitment to winning has nothing to do with anything but his own ego. I am talking about the man that punked Tom Landry. I am talking about the only man in the history of the world to run off a coach immediately after his team won back-to-back championships.

I am talking about the man who found a way to stroke his ego and keep himself in the national spotlight without winning anything but the vote of the citizens of Arlington, Texas.

This man allowed his team’s archenemy, the Philadelphia Eagles, to swoop in and steal the free agent cornerback his team so desperately needed. This man pinches pennies on personnel from his magnificent billion-dollar edifice. This man was content to enter the 2011 NFL season dangerously thin at cornerback.

This man has a mortgage to pay.

This man had us all watching a kid named McCann do his dead-level best to cover Plaxico Burress.

Blame whomever you like. I say Jerry Jones is as much to blame as Tony Romo and the punt team.

I am mad as hell, and I’m not gonna take it anymore!

The love fest at the conclusion of what was almost the perfect Sunday Night Football game ruined the whole night for me.The way the vanquished Dallas Cowboys embraced the victorious Philadelphia Eagles, you would think they had just completed a closed-door corporate merger and were set to announce they were all now on the same team and headed for the Super Bowl together.

You know, like LeBron James and his new crew. One big, happy, rich family.

Remember when you learned the truth about Santa Claus?

Did you feel a little like you had been played? Like you were buying into this colossal, universal lie that everyone was in on but you? Did you begin to have suspicions about the other stuff your mom and dad told you about life in general and Christmas in particular?

So, Santa and his flying reindeer are fantasy, but the virgin-born baby Jesus, that’s real?

It all gets very confusing when people are selling you things that are a mixture of fantasy and reality.

Like NFL football, for instance.

As far back as I can remember, I have been a football freak. I bought player cards, magazines, electric football sets. Heck, I even organized paper football leagues at school, the kind where you fold a piece of notebook paper into a triangle, your friend makes goal posts with his fingers, and you attempt to thump a field goal and put his eye out at the same time.

I was a true believer.

I believed in the magic, the wonder of the NFL and its greatest, most glorious team: My Dallas Cowboys.

I believed they cared as much as I did, even more, how the game turned out on Sunday. I believed they were warriors, willing to sacrifice life and limb for the team they loved every bit as much as I did.

Then, I saw the 2010 Dallas Cowboys suffer their ninth gut-wrenching loss in 13 tries.

They lost 30–27 to the hated Philadelphia Eagles, led by Michael Vick—former inmate number 33765-183 and current number seven in your program—and their jolly, round bellied, rose-cheeked coach, Andy Reid.

While I am trying to figure out how a defense that took the field with more than four minutes on the clock, all of their timeouts in hand, and needing just to get one lousy defensive stop, got sliced and diced like a ripe tomato, right up the middle, by a team that doesn’t even like to run the football, the Cowboys are running onto the field all grins and giggles like preteen girls at a Jonas Brothers concert.

There is no Santa.

Worse still, there is no NFL. There is only the WWF masquerading as the NFL.

It is all just a show. It may as well be on Broadway and feature Barbra Streisand belting out some soul-shaking sonnet, face aglow, enraptured, big beak of a nose pointed to heaven (or at least the balcony), making us believe, making us cry, strumming out hearts with her lie, while her mind wanders to a double cheeseburger and milk shake.

While you took it like a punch to the gut—the loss that officially means your Cowboys will have a losing season for the first time since 2004—your heroes were all smiles and back slaps.

Could someone please explain to Jason Garrett, the man I have unashamedly backed for the head coach position for the past two years, that losing a heart-breaker of a game on national television is probably not the best forum for a possum-eating-peat seed grin and a Christmas morning-like bounce in your step?

You would have thought Jerry Jones—who was down there on the sidelines, performing that ridiculous sideshow clown act we have come to know so well—had just whispered, “You got the job, Red,” into his ear.

Garrett needs to understand that, here in Dallas, when we grab the measuring stick of coaching greatness, it bears the likeness of Tom Landry on one side and Jimmy Johnson on the other.

Jimmy Johnson didn’t have a good old time of yucks and giggles after losing the game known as “Bounty Bowl II” to coach Buddy Ryan’s Eagles. In fact, Johnson, red-faced and more than a little torqued, claimed he wanted to have a word with Ryan about it, but the Philly coach “ran his fat butt” to the locker room before he could do so.

Can you imagine Tom Landry grinning like Garrett at, say, George Allen after his archenemy had just punched the Cowboys’ ticket to a losing season?

Can you imagine Landry smiling, embracing and encouraging Ron Jaworski?

Heck, Tom barely cracked a smile when he won the Super Bowl! He dang sure wasn’t grinning like he just scored a prom date with the head cheerleader after a tough loss to a bitter rival.

Isn’t that the problem? For too many of today’s NFL players—more specifically, for way too many of today’s Cowboys players—there are no tough losses or bitter rivals.

We all remember Tony Romo two years ago, after his team was thoroughly humiliated 44–6 by these same Eagles, saying, “If that is the worst thing that ever happens to me, I have lived a good life.”

It’s only a game. Right, Tony?

Besides, if you miss the postseason, you can get in that many more rounds of golf.

And the bitter rival thing? They used to be able to say, “These teams do not like each other,” and it meant something.

Not anymore.

They are no longer teams; they are a team. They are just one big fraternity, one troupe, paid insanely huge salaries to put on a show, to act out a part.

These thespians (another word for “players”) don’t even have the decency to wait until the curtain closes to hug each other and laugh at the audience for buying into their sham. They do it at midfield, beneath the bright lights, the TV cameras, and the disillusioned fans, who watch, mouths agape and misty-eyed, as the truth about Santa and all the other silly things they used to believe in is hammered home once again.

Then there is Tashard Choice.

What can you say about a guy who deals with a tough loss by asking the opposing quarterback for an autograph?

But that sort of thing happens every day, right? Don’t you remember Tony Dorsett running over to get Bradshaw’s autograph right after the Cowboys lost to the Pittsburgh Steelers in the Super Bowl?

You don’t remember that?

Me neither.

What about the time when Emmitt Smith hit Steve Young up for his autograph after Young beat them in the 1994 NFC championship game. Remember that?

Me neither.

When the NFL is full of players who care less about the outcome of games than the fans do, players whose sole concern is when does the check hit the bank and how much is it…

When the team I follow is made up of players for whom losing doesn’t hurt…

When perhaps the best running back on the Dallas Cowboys runs like a school girl to Michael Vick for an autograph…

When a defense that was supposed to be the strength of the team allows the opponent to run through them like Sherman through Georgia, running four minutes off the game clock and sealing the win…

When the head coach watches with a grin while his team quietly folds its hand…

It is almost enough for me to cheer for a lock-out. It is almost enough for me to hope their own greed and excesses finally brings them to their collective knees, until they remember it is more than a game.

And it is their privilege, not their birthright, to play it.

And when they do play it, they get paid to do so for one reason, and one reason only.

Because we care.

Give 'em Hell, boys!

David Garrard just played the best game of his NFL career against the Dallas Cowboys. He completed 17 of 21 passes for 260 yards and four touchdowns. He also scored a rushing touchdown on a quarterback keeper. His passer rating for the game was a dazzling 158.3

After the game, Garrard, in an interview with Sports Illustrated’s Peter King, talked about why he and his Jaguars were so successful against the Cowboys. Interestingly, he didn’t talk about being in “the zone” or bringing his “A game.” Instead, he questioned his opponent’s effort.

“It just looked like they weren’t into the game like an NFL team should be,” Garrard told King.

Garrard went on to say that he noticed a “woe is me” attitude among some of the Cowboys’ players.

So, there you have it. Just as we suspected, the Jaguars are what we thought they were, which is a 3-4, so-so, middle-of-the-pack NFL team trying to scratch out a win and get to 4-4 going into their bye week. They are not the Steelers of ’70s, the 49er of the ’80s, or the Cowboys of the ’90s. But they are a professional NFL team and if you are not going to put up a fight, they are more than capable of hanging 35 points on you and looking like world beaters.

It is no surprise to anyone who has watched this Cowboys team during the Wade Phillips era that this team has a “woe is me” attitude. Teams, whether Jerry Jone or Phillips will admit or not, reflect the attitude and persona of their head coach. They do.

“Well, these are grown men. They are professionals. They should police themselves. They don’t need a coach telling them what they should be doing.”This is the rationale we have often heard around the Dallas/Fort Worth Metroplex when it comes to the Dallas Cowboys and the coaching situation.

That kind of thinking is ridiculous and wrong. It is the same as saying that leadership doesn’t matter. It is the same as saying that men like Vince Lombardi and Tom Landry were superfluous and not vital to their teams’ success. It is like saying Douglas MacArthur had nothing to do with the victory in the Pacific Theatre in World War II or that Alexander the Great wasn’t really all that great.

Leadership matters. I work in an industry rife with professional men, too. That doesn’t mean that the company leadership won’t set a standard and expect it to be reached. They will. Fail to meet that standard and you will soon be on Uncle Obama’s payroll, collecting your unemployment check and your food stamps.

Watch any Wade Phillips press conference. Notice the hang-dog, woe-is-me attitude. Listen to him make excuses and pass the buck. Then, watch a Cowboys’ game. Deja Vu!

The Cowboys are losing because they are functioning in an environment where maximum effort is optional, where dumb mistakes are tolerated, where big paychecks are guaranteed regardless of your production.They work in the perfect environment for producing under-achievement.

David Garrard is not Joe Montana. The Jacksonville Jaguars are not the ’60s Packers. But they didn’t need to be. All they needed was to show up. That is all you have to do to beat a team that won’t even put up a good fight.

Jerry Jones needs to fire Wade Phillips right now. Everyone knows it. Peter King knows it. David Garrard knows it. You know it. I know it. Heck, even Wade himself knows it.

“Our team didn’t play with enough passion, enough effort, enough fortitude to compete in this game.”

Those are the words of Wade Phillips, a coach who knows he has lost his team. But will he lose his Job?

Only Jerry Jones knows the answer to that one.

I was six years old when my Uncle Daryle began drilling me on Dallas Cowboys’ names and numbers. Whenever our families would get together, usually on holidays or random summer trips to visit them in San Antonio, the Dallas Cowboys would ultimately become a topic of discussion. The tales of gridiron heroics had me dreaming of one day wearing a star on my helmet, of playing the world’s greatest game for the world’s greatest team.

If it wasn’t Uncle Daryle, it was Uncle Gary, both of them uncles by marriage, and neither of them around anymore. They were better Cowboys fans than they were husbands, so they got themselves kicked to the curb, but before they did, they helped burn the storied Dallas Cowboys’ star into my medulla.

I have rarely missed a game since. From the Hail Mary heroics of Roger Staubach and Drew Pearson to the unbelievable Thanksgiving Day play of the one-hit wonder, the Mad Bomber, Clint Longley, to the Tony Dorsett Monday night 99-yard dash into the history books to the three Super Bowl wins of the Triplets and their compadres, I have been there, cheering my lungs out, sweating bullets, bleeding silver and blue.

I have been there through the bad times, too.

I remember those heart-wrenching Super Bowl losses to the Pittsburgh Steelers in the ’70s. I remember. I remember the circus-catching, high-flying Lynn Swann and the frying pans-for-hands Jackie Smith and the roles they each played in determining “the team of the ’70s.” I remember 1-15 in 1989. I was in shock with the rest of Cowboys Nation when Jerry Jones failed to check his ego and fired Jimmy Johnson after he had won a second consecutive Super Bowl!

Through thick and thin, come Hell or high water, up or down, I have cheered for my team. I have never wavered even once in my loyalty. Nor will I now.

Yet, I wonder if it isn’t time that a true-blue Dallas Cowboys fan cheered for his team’s failure.

Hear me out before you write me off or chunk me under the nearest bus. Roughly 99.9 percent of us can agree on this fact: Jerry Jones and his massive ego have played in indisputable role in this team’s 15-year failure to return to glory. He thinks himself a better football mind than he is. He cannot abide a strong leader in the locker room, sucking up the air and the glory he desires for himself. Witness the Jimmy Johnson firing, the Bill Parcells exit, and the hiring of puppet-coaches like Chan Gailey, Dave Campo, and now the finest puppet of them all, Wade Phillips.

The only thing that has ever forced Jones’ hand, the only thing that has ever made him bite the bullet and seek out a real head football coach, is desperation. Even now, when his team, a preseason Super Bowl favorite, sits at 1-5, he remains unmoved. He stubbornly insists that Wade Phillips is exactly the man he wants on that sideline.

So, what will move Jones to consider making the wholesale changes necessary to mold this collection of undisciplined, underachieving over-hyped prima donnas into a real football team? Abject failure. Total implosion. A half-empty billion-dollar football palace. That…and nothing else.

Jones has been too successful in his lifetime. The mold is cast. He believes in his own invincibility. He actually swallows those heaping spoonfuls of bull hockey he tries to feed the fans and media. He is in grave danger of becoming Al Davis, whose past glories have helped to rot his brain, ruin his perspective and mire his club in perpetual disarray.

If the Cowboys are to ever rise to glory again, it will be under the leadership of a new head coach. Therefore, they must fail enough to force the stubborn owner into making that change.

It is a quandary, is it not? While you watch the Cowboys line up against a very beatable Jacksonville Jaguars team, your natural instinct will be to cheer your Boys on to victory. But should you? Should I?

Or is it time for real Dallas Cowboys fans to lower the team flag, raise the white flag, and cheer for failure until it forces the hand of the man who has the gun to his own franchise’s head?

If you have read this column before, then you may be vaguely aware that this writer has had coach Wade Phillips squarely in his sights almost since the coach rolled into Valley Ranch to sit on Uncle Jerry Jones’ knee and play puppet/coach for the Dallas Cowboys.

(Don’t you hate it when writers refer to themselves like that? “This writer.” Please. I mean to say “I” have done that.)

Wade Phillips is a great defensive coordinator. Not many would argue against that, even after Chicago Bears‘ offensive coordinator Mike Martz took him to the woodshed and taught him a lesson on in-game adjustments last Sunday. His defense coughing up the occasional hairball notwithstanding, if defensive coordinator was Phillips’ title, then I would be satisfied with the job he has done.

But that is not his title.

Jerry Jones hired the man to be his head coach, and as such he has failed miserably. Two years ago, he led a 13-3 team to a disastrous first-round loss in the playoffs. Last year, he got his first-ever playoff victory against an over-matched Eagles team, only to follow that with a humiliating shellacking in Minnesota at the hands of the aged (or ageless, if you prefer) Brett Favre.

Laurence Peter could do a case study on Wade Phillips…or just make Wade the poster child for his Peter Principle. You remember that one, right? It states, “In a hierarchy, every employee tends to rise to the level of their incompetence.”

Wade Phillips has now had his shot with four NFL teams. Until last year, he had never delivered so much as a single playoff win. What he has delivered, and continues to deliver, is acres and acres of statistics and excuses. His press conferences after a loss are always contentious, with him inevitably becoming defensive, passive-aggressive, and ultimately wrapping himself in stats.

After the Chicago loss, Wade was asked what adjustments Martz and the Bears made to thwart his efforts to pressure Cutler. Phillips answered, “Not much, the quarterback started getting rid of the ball a little quicker, we knew he was going to run around and we thought he did a good job of that. We had 2 sacks and 2 more sacks that we had roughing the passer on that negated a couple of big plays for us.”

Yes, Wade. Point out how many sacks and pressures you had. Then tell us how many points your team scored and how many they yielded, because the only stat that matters in the playoff picture is wins and losses.

Don’t get me wrong; I love statistics as much as the next guy. I just don’t like it when the man charged with taking a team to the Super Bowl takes refuge in them.

I stopped at Whataburger for a breakfast sandwich this morning and an old fat guy was wearing a worn out, holey, dirty t-shirt that read, “I have a million excuses. Which one do you want?” I asked if he stole the shirt from Wade Phillips and he answered, “No, but I have thought of giving it to him.”

It is time for the excuses to stop. It is time for the Wade Phillips experiment to end. It is time for Jerry to look for a real head coach.

And I do not mean Jason Garrett, who appears to be just another example of Mr. Peters’ genius observation at work.

"Yo! Ice Cream Man. Over here!"

The Dallas Cowboys beat the Giants Sunday. If you do not believe me, just ask head coach Wade Phillips. He will delight in telling you all of the good things his team did that day. He will outline all of the ways his team won.

It was, after all, a record-setting day for Tony Romo and a record-tying day for Jason Witten. The defense played well…well, if you don’t count that ridiculous 74-yard Brandon Jacobs “scamper” (if a play that lasts long enough for you to order and receive a Papa John’s pizza can be called a scamper) on a simple swing pass. Special teams were special except for that one little breakdown on the 78-yard punt return for a TD. You know, the one where every Cowboy on the field and half the ones on the sideline had their hands on him, but couldn’t get him to the ground.

Being a Dallas Cowboys fan these days can create enough mixed emotions to cause internal bleeding. On the one hand, of course, you want your team to succeed. You want them to bury the Ghost of Christmases Past and finally show up for December football.

On the other hand, however, you are desperate – desperate - to be rid of a head coach that just doesn’t get it…and never will. Wade Phillips will always have an excuse. He will always take consolation in statistics. He will always defend himself. He will never accept responsibility. He will never demand excellence of his players. He will never command respect.

He will, however, remain the head coach of the Dallas Cowboys if Jerry Jones can find the least excuse to keep him around.

So, as a Cowboys fan, you want success in December, sure. You want your team to finally get a playoff win after thirteen embarrassing years of mediocrity, underachievement, excuses, and disappointment.

But is it worth it?

A conundrum is what it is. Does any football fan want to hear the coach of his favorite team whine like a middle school girl to a room full of media types?

“I coach them the way I want to coach them,” Phillips said in response to a question about whether he ever gets as angry with his players as he does reporters, “And you can report the way you want to report.”

We will, Wade. We will call it like we see it. And what we see is a team that lost an important divisional game because of mental breakdowns and give-ups on four huge plays Sunday. What we see is a team that went into the game against the Giants with sole possession of first place in the NFC East, and came out tied with the Eagles. What we see is the Giants nipping at your heels, a season sweep of your Cowboys in their hip pockets.

What we see is the calendar, Wade. It reads, “December.” What we see is another late-season loss. What we see is you down-playing the loss, defending your team and demanding nothing (well, nothing except the respect you so desperately want from the media).

What we see is a light at the end of a thirteen-year long tunnel and we hope it is an oncoming train…and that it carries you away…far, far away, to a place where Decembers don’t matter, where early season wins are just as important as playoff victories, where stat sheets are equal to scoreboards, where reporters never badger beleaguered coaches, and where “ifs and buts” really are candy and nuts.

It is a wonderful place where all of your dreams can come true, Wade. It is just too bad that Dallas Cowboys fans will be forced to endure one more nightmare just so you can dream.

Let’s preface this list with an important qualifying statement: the only moments up for consideration are on-the-field occurrences. In other words, this is a list of the ten most devastating plays in team history. Consequently, we won’t be mentioning moments many may consider catastrophic, like the day Landry was fired or the day Jimmy Johnson walked away or the day Switzer was hired. Nor will we talk about the “white house” or the Michael Irvin trial. We may long debate the impact of such happenings on the team. But that is a different discussion.

In selecting the plays included in this list, several factors were considered:

• Was it a catastrophic moment for the team?
• Do Cowboys fans still remember it?
• Does it still hurt?

Number Ten: Cards Make History with Blocked Punt. On October 12, 2008, The Dallas Cowboys would suffer a tough overtime loss to the Arizona Cardinals. The catastrophic moment came in overtime, when, after the Cowboys offense failed to do anything with the opening drive, Mat McBriar was called on to punt the ball away. But the Cardinals’ Sean Morey broke through to block the punt and teammate Monty Biesel scooped up the ball and scored the winning touchdown. The Cowboys would spiral into an 8-8 finish while the Cards would finally break through with a successful postseason and their first-ever Super Bowl appearance. Oh, and McBriar was lost for the season.

Number Nine: Rookie Kicks Cowboys in the Super Bowl Groin. The Cowboys had finally done it. After years of falling just short and being called “bridesmaids” or dubbed “next year’s champs,” they made the Super Bowl. Their opponent was the John Unitas-led Baltimore Colts. Super Bowl V was a mess. The teams combined for eleven turnovers. Some called it the “Blunder Bowl,” or the “Stupor Bowl.” Still, Dallas had a 13-6 lead at the end of three quarters. The Colts, however, would tie the score in the fourth. Then, with five seconds left in the game, rookie kicker Jim O’Brien trotted onto the field and promptly kicked a 32-yard field goal to win the game. Next year’s champs would have to wait…again.

Desecration

Number Eight: T.O. Desecrates the Star. It would have been impossible to imagine on September 24, 2000 that Terrell Owens would some day be dancing into the end zone, scoring TDs with the Cowboys’ star on his helmet. In the ultimate show of disrespect for a franchise and its fans, the lightening rod (some say Nimrod) receiver scored a TD for the 49ers and then dashed to the star at the fifty yard line to rub his success – and their failure – in the nose of the Dallas Cowboys and their longsuffering fans. Owens scored twice that day and made the same trip to the star each time. The second time, safety George Teague knocked him off the star. It was a bad start to a decade that has mostly been unkind to the Cowboys.

Number Seven: “No, Danny! No!” The Cowboys were looking good going into the final weeks of the 1983 season. Then, they ran into the hated Redskins. The ‘Skins held the ‘Boys to a franchise-low 33 yards rushing. Washington had a thin 14-10 lead in the third quarter. Dallas had the ball, fourth and one, at their own 48. Landry instructed quarterback Danny White to use a hard count to try and draw the defense offsides. White, however, changed the play at the line of scrimmage, calling for a Ron Springs run up the middle. Springs lost two yards and the Cowboys lost the game. Cameras caught an animated Tom Landry on the sideline yelling, “No! No, Danny! No!” It was as close as the stoic coach ever came to losing his cool during a game. Moreover, after a decade (the 70s) of five Super Bowl appearances and two wins, the Cowboys would begin a slow spiral through the 80s.

Number Six: The Play-Maker will Play No More Forever. October, 1999. Michael Irvin’s career-ending inury was a catastrophic moment for himself and the Cowboys. It served notice that the Triplets were done. Their marvelous run as the mighty triumverate of football acumen came to an unceremonious end when the polarizing, flamboyant, spiritual leader of the team of the 90′s landed awkwardly on his head after hauling in his last-ever pass from Troy Aikman. To make matters worse, it happened in the worst possible place: Philadelphia. The classless morons making up a significant part of the crowd that day once again proved themselves to be America’s lowest form of sports fan: the kind that cheers the failure of others even more loudly than the success of their own team. (Losers are that way.) CNNSI.com reported the incident this way:

By cheering Dallas Cowboys receiver Michael Irvin as he lay motionless on the turf Sunday with a neck injury, the fans brought the city’s reputation for boorishness to new lows. It disgusted even those who thought they had seen it all in the “City of Brotherly Love.”

“Unspeakable, even for us,” proclaimed a headline in the Philadelphia Daily News.

Number Five: A Disgraceful End to A Glorious Run. It was the final game ever to be played in Texas Stadium, where so many glories of the past had transpired, where so many great Cowboys players had left their indelible mark. The final game was not against a division rival…or any other bitter rival, like maybe the 49ers or Steelers. It was the Ravens. No history there. Well, now there is. The Baltimore Birds made history. First, halfback Willis Mcgahee tied a Texas Stadium record with a 77-yard touchdown run against the Dallas D (the one Wade Phillips had taken over and “improved” in recent weeks). Then, his teammate, Le’Ron McLain broke the record with an 82 yard run. The Dallas defenders looked like matadors on that play.  I know: this is two plays…but they happened so closely together and constituted a single insult. The light that had shined so gloriously through the hole in the stadium’s roof into the North Texas night for 28 years was unceremoniously doused. If Jerry Jones had walked down to the field and fired the excuse-making, underachieving, overmatched, good ole boy head coach right there on the spot, who could have blamed him? But Jerry needs a man who will surrender enough of his manhood for the owner to retain absolute control. Wade Phillips – the world’s doughiest puppet – is his man. (Pardon the veering and venting. It still smarts.)

Number Four: Romo Fumbles Away Playoff Victory. January 6, 2007, Seattle, Washington. First, let us be clear: Romo the quarterback played well enough to defeat the Seattle Seahawks on their own turf and earn a long-awaited and much-needed playoff victory for his franchise. Romo the kickholder did not. I place as much blame on the shoulders of the world’s biggest Tuna as I do on Romo. Why on earth do you need the starting quarterback, the man who has poured everything he has onto the field of battle, to hold the ball for your kicker? Do you also want him distributing Gatorade during timeouts? Maybe he could work a hot dog stand. At any rate, Romo bobbles the hold. The Cowboys fail to score. The Seahawks make sure they don’t get another shot. The playoff drought continues.

Ouch!

Number Three: The Catch. January 10, 1982, San Francisco. It was a prayer, uttered by a desperation-heaving Joe Montana and answered by a right-place-at-the-right-moment Dwight Clark. With Ed “Too Tall” Jones closing in and looming over Montana’s field of vision, the man who would become arguably the game’s greatest clutch quarterback launched his fabled assault on  NFL post-season lore. The Catch, as the play that sealed the NFC championship victory for the Forty-Niners would come to be known, marked the end of one dynasty and the birth of another. The torch was reluctantly passed.

Frigid

Number Two: Ice, Ice, Baby. December 31, 1967, Lambeau Field, Green Bay. The Ice Bowl is one of the most famous games in NFL history. Game time temperature was -13 degrees Farenheit. The wind chill was -48°. The great game came down to a Packers’ third and goal at the Cowboys’ one yard line. Players could be seen stomping at the ground with their cleats, trying to get traction. The Cowboys clung tenaciously to a tenuous 17-14 lead. They expected a pass. A completion would win the game and an incompletion would stop the clock for one last try. Instead, Quarterback Bart Starr ran a QB sneak right at defensive tackle Jethro Pugh and behind guard Jerry Kramer. Starr scored and the Pack won its third consecutive NFL championship, while the Cowboys were foiled and frustrated once again.

Agony

Number One: Jackie Smith. January 21, 1979, Super Bowl XIII. If you are a Cowboys fan 40 years old or older, it is doubtful that any former player’s name brings more gut-wrenching agony than that of Jackie Smith. Smith was a superb tight end who spent his entire career laboring away on a so-so Cardinals’ team. He was thirty-eight when the Cowboys signed him. With Dallas trailing 21-14, Smith dropped a sure-fire touchdown pass in the end zone. The ball just bounced off his chest. The Cowboys settled for a field goal, making Smith’s play a four-point debacle. The Cowboys ultimately lost by those four points, 35-31. If they had won, it would have meant that they and the Steelers each had three Super Bowl victories in the 70′s, with the Cowboys making five appearances to the Steelers’ four. Instead, the Steelers were proclaimed the team of the decade and the Cowboys’ remarkable achievement of appearing in half of the decade’s Super Bowls was relegated to a “nice” accomplishment.

Every team has its share of disappointments, and the Cowboys are no different. No team wins them all. This is the beauty of competition. The games, the plays, the victories, the defeats…they live on inside us. They fuel our heated debates. They fire our imaginations. They fill us with joy…or pain. They remind us of the human condition. They whet our appetite for more.

Some are grizzled enough to remember when Saturday afternoon during the slow season meant you would be treated to ABC’s Wide World of Sports. The thrill of victory and the agony of defeat! This timeless line from that program is forever embedded into the consciousness of a nation of sports lovers.

As much as any fan, I detest the agony of defeat. I hate it when my team loses. I especially hate it when they lose to their hated rivals. It hurts. Sometimes, that pain stays with you. I still smart over the two losses the Cowboys suffered at the hands of the Steelers in Super Bowls X and XIII. My mind still works on ways they could have won those games.

Conversely, Super Bowl XII versus the Broncos is one of the sweetest memories of my life. I watched that game with my very best childhood friends, and our guys dominated. It was pure ecstasy.

My first personal experience with the thrill of victory, as with many guys, came during my Little League Baseball career. I am a lefty, so, naturally, I was cast as a pitcher. I threw hard, but was often wild. The result was that only the very good batters had the nerve to stand in against me. The rest were just trying to figure out when they needed to hit the dirt. I played for the Athletics. Our city’s league was not sanctioned, I guess, for there was nothing beyond the city championship. If you were city champions, that was the pinnacle of achievement in Mineral Wells, Texas.

My second and final year on that team, we made it to the championship game. Our ace had pitched the semi-final. He would be playing short stop the night of the championship…and batting clean-up, as always. That meant I would be on the mound. Despite three hit batters, I pitched a shut out. I also delivered a home run in the first inning. It was a glorious night. We were city champions, and I was a hero. That was the sweetest thing: the thrill of victory.

Later that Fall, playing linebacker and returning punts and kickoffs for the Hornets, I found myself on a football team contending for the Pop Warner city championship. What a year I was having! Ah, but this game was so different from the baseball experience. We were rolled by the team with the best halfback in the city. I have no idea how many yards he gained, but I know he broke several long runs right over me. He seemed like the result of some mad scientist’s mixture of Jim Brown and Gale Sayers. We lost…big!

I cried that night. I lay in my bed and the hot tears of humiliation and anger stung my cheeks.

It wouldn’t be until many years later that I would come to realize that the agony of losing is just as important and just as meaningful to one’s life as the thrill of victory. In fact, if you didn’t have the one, you wouldn’t have the other. If all you ever did was win, it would surely lose its thrill. Just note how fat and sassy – and nit-picky – fans of dynasty teams become during their team’s dynasty. They moan and bitch about every little thing. Then, as soon as the inevitable cycle occurs, when their team is no longer the best, they become sentimental and review “the good old days” through their rose-tinted beer steins.

Winning all the time would mean that you are probably out of your league. Your competition isn’t up to par. So, your victories are cheapened. It would be like you were the smartest kid in the remedial class.  No one, not even the very best, win all the time. Not Federer, not Tiger, not the Yankees, not the Steelers…not (sniff) even the Cowboys.

Even for champion-caliber teams and individuals, there is the bitter taste of what my dad used to call, “almost, nearly, but not quite hardly.”

The person who can deal with defeat as well as he handles victory is a well-rounded, complete individual. If you can lose and not be crushed or win and not be vain, you are the kind of person every person ought to be. If you can hate losing, but still give a nod to the victor, if you can defeat your opponent and accept the accolades with real grace (and not false humility), then you are living and learning the life lessons the sports arena is best designed to teach.

This brings to mind one of my favorite poems by one of the world’s great poets. I give you IF, by Rudyard Kipling:

If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you;
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too;
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or, being lied about, don’t deal in lies,
Or, being hated, don’t give way to hating,
And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise;

If you can dream – and not make dreams your master;
If you can think – and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with triumph and disaster
And treat those two imposters just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to broken,
And stoop and build ‘em up with wornout tools;

If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breath a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: “Hold on”;

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with kings – nor lose the common touch;
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you;
If all men count with you, but none too much;
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run -
Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,
And – which is more – you’ll be a Man my son!

Someone said, “It’s not whether you win or lose; it’s how you play the game.” We all, intuitively, know better. Winning and losing does matter. Each is a possible outcome. One is sweet; the other bitter. But, as another has noted, “Losing isn’t fatal and victory isn’t final.”

So, play to win…but win or lose, your life is richer because you dared, because you cared, because you were there. You experienced it. You lived it.

You really lived.