It is perfect that the most popular team in Mexico is the Dallas Cowboys, because the Mexican national soccer team and the Cowboys, they’re the same thing. A completely overhyped do-nothing outfit with a fanbase that is convinced of its team’s and their own greatness with absolutely nothing to support that. And every time we get to the time that really counts, both spit up a hairball the size of a Cadillac. Neither has accomplished anything in the modern era, and yet they keep being treated like they truly matter. They don’t, and the only reason they get so much coverage is they keep demanding it through their own tantrums and inflated sense of worth that has only been built on their previous sense of self-worth. It has no foundation anymore.
So here we are with the Cowboys again, who will have an oil-tanker’s worth of ink spilled about them over the coming days, even though all they are is a second-place team that got a sweetheart draw in the first round of the playoffs against a quarterback who is three days older than water (in football years) who is probably crafting his own Death Cab For Cutie album. They come up against a real team with a real coach and a real plan and they only manage a single touchdown while getting a sock stuffed down their throat again. Which is what always happens. Except this time Dak Prescott didn’t forget how time worked, which I guess is an improvement.
It is now 28 years since the Cowboys won — or appeared in — their last Super Bowl. Only eight teams haven’t managed to get to THE BIG GAME in the interim, and those teams are the Browns, Jets, Dolphins, Bills, whatever the fuck Washington is called now, Vikings, Lions, Jags, and Texans (who have only been around for 21 of those years). That’s where the Cowboys reside, that’s the company they keep, and it’s high fucking time everyone acts like it. They’re an also-ran. Expensive scenery.
Why does Dallas get so much play?
And why do we care about the Cowboys so much? It’s not Dallas so much. No one gives a flying fornication about the Mavericks except when Luka Doncic spends a month putting up 40-10-10, and even then it’s a footnote. The Rangers just signed Jacob deGrom, and I would wager 45 percent of baseball fans at least have forgotten the Rangers exist at all. The Stars? Other than the stray Jamie Benn joke no one gives a shit, I assure you. It’s a big market, but it’s not L.A., it’s not New York. And we’re all well fucking sick of the Knicks, which the Boyz aren’t really all that different from.
You can look forward to a few days of debate over whether or not Dak Prescott is “the guy,” most of that coming from Skip Bayless standing on the desk without pants as he furiously satisfies himself on camera. It’s the same debate that everyone had for a decade about Tony Romo. And thanks to all of that horseshit we have to listen to Romo every Sunday deal with an excess of gas on air. The motherfucker can’t even speak in complete sentences anymore, but he’ll be collecting $17 million a year to belch and sound like he sat on something pointy for three hours per week until the end of time because he just happened to quarterback the Cowboys. If he had the exact same playing record as a Bronco he’d be signing an autobiography at a car dealership and appearing next to Frank Thomas in those ads about how the Big Hurt and Doug Flutie are coming to fuck your wife.
The Cowboys don’t matter. They’re not going to matter. And every year we’ll get the same post-mortem from Jerry Jones even as his skin looks like it’s turning into a Pollack painting that had sex with a deep sea creature. They’re just amplified background noise, playing in an airport hangar that was built as a tribute to an erection Jones had 45 years ago that he can barely remember in a city that answers the question, “What if a rest stop mutated beyond our control?” (with some Hard Eight locations mixed in).
You get a year off. We’ll all reconvene here next January.
Gio Reyna shuts everyone up
Gio Reyna has certainly had his fair share of noise around him lately, some of it definitely his fault but the parts that weren’t his fault have been boosted by individuals acting outside his control. But he can still do this:
Though we can definitely get at him for the fingers-in-ears celebration, because at the end of the day, the root of all this silliness on the USMNT is that Reyna acted like a turd in training for the World Cup. You don’t get to make a show about how you’re not affected by the distractions when you’re the reason there are so many distractions, joy boy. But nice work.