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09-28-2023 10:26 PM |
Dallas Morning News: The Chiefs have replaced the Cowboys as America's Team
Brings a tear to my eye. Almost full circle from childhood. I used to sit and read Tim at my breakfast table in Carrollton.
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">A (Taylor) Swift reaction: The Chiefs have replaced Cowboys as America’s Team <a href="https://t.co/Ss34ekpk2i">https://t.co/Ss34ekpk2i</a></p>— Tim Cowlishaw (@TimCowlishaw) <a href="https://twitter.com/TimCowlishaw/status/1707473232234721756?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">September 28, 2023</a></blockquote> <script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
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As majestically as the Cowboys soar when they pocket a couple of victories to start a season, a loss in Arizona mandates an equally spectacular fall back to earth. That’s what has me pondering this week whether the wrong team left Dallas 60 years ago.
Aren’t the Kansas City Chiefs “America’s Team” at this point?
For those who weren’t around in 1963 (and by “around,” I mean I was migrating reluctantly from New Jersey to Dallas as an 8-year-old that summer), the Dallas Texans and Dallas Cowboys went head to head for attention at the Cotton Bowl for three seasons before the Texans packed bags and became the Kansas City Chiefs.
Many years ago Lamar Hunt bragged to me in his office that the Texans, of the upstart American Football League, actually outdrew the expansion Cowboys in those days. To which President Tex Schramm replied, “Yes, I’m sure they gave away more tickets than we sold.”
The Chiefs actually got the upper hand on the Cowboys by playing in the first Super Bowl. The name even came from Hunt, after seeing one of his kids play with a super ball. Dallas just missed the first Super Bowl by losing to Green Bay — and then Kansas City won Super Bowl IV in New Orleans before the two leagues officially merged their schedules, creating the NFC and AFC in 1970. You never would have known the Chiefs were defending champs of anything. They played in one AFC title game, losing to Buffalo in 1993, over the next 48 years.
The Cowboys, of course, played in five Super Bowls during the 1970s, winning two of them. They became unofficially branded “America’s Team” by NFL Films, a nickname that stuck for better or worse through the years as they regained their footing and won three more Lombardi Trophies in the 1990s. The Cowboys won five of the first 30 Super Bowls. They participated in 16 of 30 NFL or NFC Championship games. There was no one like them, certainly not the Chiefs who had that one uneven loss to Buffalo during Joe Montana’s career send-off to their credit.
Then a Texas Tech quarterback arrived in Kansas City. The NFL shifted on its axis. The Chiefs have played in three of the last four Super Bowls. They won two of them. Their most impressive stat, to me, is not that they have played in five straight AFC Championship games, but that they have hosted five in a row. That requires maximum effort throughout the regular season, no stumbles in order to maintain that home-field edge. Mahomes led Kansas City to 12-4, 12-4, 14-2, 12-5 and 14-3 records to keep those games in Arrowhead Stadium.
Andy Reid’s next win ties him with Tom Landry for fourth on the all-time list (250) although Reid’s winning percentage is substantially higher. Of course, Reid never had to coach an expansion team that was given no draft picks in 1960, which meant an 0-11-1 start out of the gates for Dallas.
With all this going in their favor, the Chiefs discovered the only way to blow the doors off their competition. Taylor Swift showed up in a Kansas City suite last week, standing and cheering in Chiefs’ gear along tight end Travis Kelce’s mother, and she apparently will attend the Chiefs-Jets game in New York on Sunday night.
This isn’t fair. The Cowboys used to own the dating world along with the occasional Lombardi Trophy. It started with Lance Rentzel and Joey Heatherton. That didn’t end well for reasons we won’t even dive into. More recently, you had Tony Romo with Jessica Simpson or Carrie Underwood. Does anyone recall Miles Austin and Kim Kardashian? If you blinked, you missed it, but it happened.
Now, we have rumors of young Dallas tight end Jake Ferguson dating one of the Cavinder twins of University of Miami basketball and TikTok fame. That’s a noble effort, but you don’t understand the Swifties and the phenomenon that Taylor Swift brings to the Chiefs just by showing up for a few games.
Every professional sports franchise — Cowboys included — would love to sell out their stadiums at Taylor Swift prices. When she played three straight nights at AT&T Stadium this year, resale tickets for obstructed view seats went for at least $900. Imagine attending a Cowboys game at that price and not having a clear view of Dak throwing a 2-yard pass to Luke Schoonmaker.
Mahomes is the finest quarterback of this era and will be regarded as one of the five best ever when he’s done. Kelce might already be the game’s all-time greatest tight end. Reid is sliding past Landry toward Bill Belichick on the wins chart. And now the mighty force that is Swift joins the club. It has been said that Swift already had all the teenagers and younger music lovers in her camp, then figured out how to grab their dads with two Americana-type albums (folklore and evermore, which come highly recommended by this columnist) released during the pandemic.
With Mahomes, Reid, Kelce and now the powerful Swift, the Chiefs have it all. It’s an embarrassment of riches, a marketing guru’s dream team.
The Cowboys? It’s 27 seasons and counting since that last NFC title game. Currently a very good 2-1 team that has not fixed last year’s biggest defensive issue and may have created new ones on offense with its glacial-like Texas Coast offense.
Oh yeah, I nearly forgot. The Cowboys get Chris Christie in the owner’s box.
Now tell me which one of these is America’s Team.
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Dallas Morning News: The Chiefs have replaced the Cowboys as America's Team
(https://chiefsplanet.com/BB/showthread.php?t=350385)