Why My Dallas Cowboys Fandom is Past Tense

I’ll never forget February 3, 2005. This is the day Pro Football Hall of Fame running back Emmitt Smith announced his retirement. He did so from a press room in Jacksonville, Florida, just days ahead of Super Bowl XXXIX between the Patriots and Eagles. I felt my entire childhood flash before my eyes that day.

Emmitt sat at this table, with the iconic Cowboys helmet sitting next to him with its silver paint job and famous navy blue star on it. He rattled off the names of teammates he had, too many to count, each with a core memory of mine attached to them. Troy Aikman. Michael Irvin. Daryl Johnston. Jay Novacek. Larry Allen. Erik Williams. Darren Woodson. Leon Lett. Kelvin Martin. And on and on.

I was at a point where I had sort of moved on from the Cowboys. Emmitt was the reason I rooted for the Dallas Cowboys. He was a hometown guy, having been a classmate of my brother’s at Escambia High School in Pensacola, Florida. I played basketball with his youngest brother Emil at Little Flower Catholic Church, just up the street from Escambia. I religiously visited Emmitt’s trading card shop First & Ten until I moved in 1994. Emmitt will forever be my favorite player.

But, Emmitt finished his career with the Arizona Cardinals, not the Dallas Cowboys. This part of the story starts in 2001. Emmitt finished the season with 1,021 yards, low for Emmitt’s standards, but still his 11 straight 1,000-yard season. Media chatter had begun suggesting it was time for the Cowboys to move on from Emmitt and start rebuilding, as Dallas finished at 5–11 that year. At this point, team owner and general manager Jerry Jones still publicly stated Emmitt was the starter.

That all changed in just a few months. Emmitt entered the 2002 offseason just 540 yards short of breaking Walter Payton’s all-time rushing record. In the meantime, the Cowboys front office (i.e. Jerry Jones) had begun praising the potential of running back Troy Hambrick. Emmitt and many Cowboys fans, including myself, wanted to see Emmitt retire as a Dallas Cowboy and, as long as Emmitt was still producing (which he was), saw no reason to move on yet. Quoting Emmitt, “Troy is a good running back and he’s getting better every day. But I still feel like I’m the starting running back and I want to be the guy out there for the Cowboys.”

Nonetheless, Hambrick picked up more carries throughout the 2002 season, to the point that it took Emmitt until Week 8 against the Seahawks to break Walter Payton’s record. Up until the point of breaking the record that game, Emmitt was fed the ball often. But, as soon as the record was broken on a classic lead-off tackle play, trademark of the Smith era, the sunsetting of Emmitt’s time had begun. Emmitt would eventually be benched for long stretches in favor of Hambrick as the Cowboys limped to another 5–11 record.

After that season, Smith and Jones would meet. Emmitt pitched the idea of staying in Dallas. Jerry passed, stating that the team was going in a different direction. The following month, the Cowboys officially released Emmitt. A month later, he would sign in Arizona. I was left bitter. Emmitt would later retire as a Dallas Cowboy, signing a ceremonial one-day contract the day of his retirement.

This wouldn’t be the first time Jerry Jones had pissed me off, and it wouldn’t be the last. Go back about a decade earlier with the falling out with coach Jimmy Johnson, the man who owns most of the responsibility for putting the 90’s Super Bowl run together, which included Smith as a key piece. Jones would have run-ins with other Cowboys coaches, including Bill Parcells, Jason Garrett, and Mike McCarthy.

Jerry has a hard time keeping his mouth shut, which, with a team with the media attention of the Cowboys, causes distractions. Jones especially can’t shut up about the performance of his quarterbacks, whether it was Tony Romo or Dak Prescott. Then there’s the contract dispute with Prescott, which went on for hours before kickoff of Week One of the 2021 season. Those negotiations lasted for nearly two years, getting only more expensive as time went on.

Jones took a hard, tone-deaf stance when players started kneeling during the national anthem, which I disagreed with. To ignore the reasons for the kneeling altogether, the fact that the kneeling was approved by a football player and former serviceman, and simply state that we must respect the flag no matter what showed a lack of empathy and didn’t sit right with me. He later softened that stance a little, stating that players could kneel before the anthem, but it’s still not enough for me.

And now, I type this a day after Jones and many former players attended the premiere of a Cowboys documentary, which will be released on Netflix this week, where Jones is having a contract dispute with Micah Parsons. Parsons is the Cowboys’ best defensive player, easily a top 5 defensive player in the NFL. Again, these negotiations have gone on for far over a year, in which it appears there have been some lies told, or at least some differences of opinion on whether actual offers have been presented. Again, all of this is getting more expensive over time, which limits who else the Cowboys could sign. And again, it’s causing a distraction, because every time Parsons’ teammates talk to the media, they’re being asked about the contract dispute. It’s all avoidable if Jones would be more willing to work with his star players.

I know Jones wants to win. If he didn’t, he’d be one of those owners who puts a crap product out just to cut costs and bleed money out of the franchise. But, he doesn’t do that. He instead wants to do it his way, which creates a chaotic environment that usually leads to the Cowboys being good, but never great. Jones wants to do it his way, but that way hasn’t worked in 30 freaking years! At some point, you would think he’d get over himself and let someone else with some pedigree take over personnel decisions. Instead, he does this shit.

The nostalgic side of me still wants to root for the Cowboys. They were my childhood after all. They were part of a fun time of sports fandom for me. But, it seems like these days it only takes Jerry a week or two to shit all over any good vibes there may be going on because he has this need to be a bigger star than anyone. And that doesn’t make it feel like it’s worth it.