Off-season training works for players and fans. As a fourteen year old I met a few Dallas Cowboys with my brothers, my dad, and my granddad.
We’ve all been Cowboy fans ever since, from the late Sixties until now. Our kids are all fans.
It’s been a great ride with Super Bowl wins and losses, close calls, and a few downer seasons.
The miracle that captured three titles in four years seemed like a gift from the football gods in Dallas.
Since then it’s been rocky. I’ve gotten older, more disappointed, more disillusioned, but did I blame the ‘Boys? Of course not. They’re Cowboys, dammit, and so am I.
At least I was.
You can’t change teams half-heartedly, but the time has come.
What happened after forty-five years of cheers?
Two men made it happen: Jerry Jones and Chip Kelly.
First, Jerry:
The Cowboy owner, general manager, and chief meddler has gone too far. Finally.
It wasn’t a good idea to surround himself with family and friends instead of football people to run his team, but I didn’t complain. Only losers complain, right? Winners work to get better and leave the whining to others.
JJ brought in the Big Tuna, Bill Parcells, to guide the Cowboy schooner to the Promised Land. It was a retread hire, but Parcells knew how to win. Complaints? Not here.
He brought in Terrell Owens against Parcells’ wishes. Chef Parcells wanted to do his own shopping and Owens wasn’t on the menu, but got him anyway.
Tony Romo dating Jessica Simpson wasn’t all bad either, but the coach didn’t need a celebrity quarterback. Today the coach is gone and Romo is still there under the leadership of Troy Aikman’s backup, Jason Garrett.
That didn’t ruin the Cowboys, neither did the smiling ginger posting three season of 8-8 ball. So what ruined my fanship?
Somehow I missed the pictures of Jerry and the strippers in a bathroom five years ago.
When they showed up again last week I took a hard look. Then looked again. I still saw the same thing, the ageless dance between young women and powerful men. But Jerry?
What’s wrong with the pictures? Am I envious? Do I want to take Jerry’s place in the shots? The dancers seem nice enough, but who follows them to the bathroom? If I did it, I’d have to flush myself down the tubes.
Still, that’s not the problem. What finally sliced my Cowboy heart of hearts, the only NFL team I’ve pledged allegiance to, is Jerry Jones’ saying the photos were a misrepresentation. That’s right, a big ol’ misrepresentation. It might work for his wife, but having a wife of my own makes me believe his house rules are different than mine.
If I understand this right, and the Jerry Jones pics are the misrepresentation he says they are, then my Cowboy love is also a misrepresentation. And if Jerry can find another strip club, I can find another team. Where does an Oregon fan with no NFL team in Portland go?
The easy answer is the Seattle Seahawks or San Francisco 49ers. Instead, I’m opting out of the west coast and following Chip Kelly’s Philadelphia Eagles.
Before you call out bandwagon jumper, I lived in Philadelphia during the Ron Jaworski years. I’ve seen more Eagles games live than any others. When the Cowboys came to town I was inside Veterans Stadium. If that happened today I’d be Eagle cheering for a former Duck.
Philadelphia owner Jeffrey Lurie tossed a longtime coach and rolled the dice with a college guy.
The Eagles courted Kelly once and lost. Two weeks later he decided to dance on the big stage and left Oregon for the City of Brotherly Love and more control.
At first the experts, along with the usual trolls, said he’d be the next college coach bust.
Since then he won his division the first year and has the rest of the NFL playing catch up. He’s adding more sports science to the NFL than anyone since Bill ‘The Genius’ Walsh, except Kelly’s science is more than a game plan.
The new coach took the job knowing he’d have a strong hand during a rebuild. No one thought a rebuilding effort would produce so fast. Turns out he didn’t need to rebuild as much as remind his players how good they could be if they followed instructions.
The Kelly Way means wearing monitors to detect fatigue in practice, drinking specific fluids and charting hydration, keeping the right hours with the right amount of sleep. It’s diet and conditioning and seeing value in every moment.
Oregon was the Kelly lab with college players, but how does it work on grown men with years of NFL experience? (Hint: they won their division and beat the Cowboys in a late game.)
Kelly sold the plan and it worked. When his best player, DeSean Jackson, turned into a financial/attitude/gang related problem (take your pick,) Kelly cut him. Who cuts their best receiver instead of working it out, or trading them?
Besides wins and losses, coaches are judged by the tree they grow, the coaching tree. I hold that Paul Brown has the greatest tree that ever took root in the NFL.
From all the talk about Chip Kelly, his tree is about to blossom. The branches will be heavier than old growth Doug Fir.
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