I Am No Longer Too Angry To Discuss Hating The Cowboys

When I first started following the NFL, and foolishly selected the (then Phoenix) Cardinals as "my" team, it was easy to dislike the Cowboys. They were good, Arizona was not. The two teams played twice a year, and Dallas regularly thumped Arizona both times. From the time when I became a fan, Dallas beat the Cardinals 8 times in a row (avg. score: 25-12), and this was in the middle of a streak of 13 victories in a row (Avg. score: 25-12) by Dallas over the Cards. Fortunate then, that San Francisco was good and the Rams weren't, so there was one other matchup more one-sided.

It was so easy to hate them. Dallas won Super Bowls. Arizona could barely finish .500. Dallas was called "America's Team", which their fans loved, but made them despised by fans of lots of other teams, including this fan here. I'm an American, and Dallas sure as hell wasn't my team. There was only one fan base that hated the Cardinals, and that was the one they abandoned in St. Louis. And once the Greatest Show on Turf got going, many fans proclaimed how much happier they were now with their new team. The Cardinals were a joke, an object of derision, mocked by gasbags like Chris Berman about how, every time they would start to show some promise, they 'would remember they were the Cardinals *hur hur hur*' and go back in the tank.

The Cowboys had Troy Aikman, Emmit Smith, who was pretty much guaranteed to get 150 yards on the ground when he played Arizona, Michael Irvin, and eventually that hot dog Deion Sanders, that everybody called the best cornerback in the game, despite the fact he seemed deathly afraid of contact. I once watched him "tackle" Larry Centers (not a large guy by fullback standards), by essentially going into the fetal position as Centers ran towards him. It surprised Centers so much, he tripped over Sanders. Shit, you didn't see Aeneas Williams shying away from physical contact, or failing to help in the running game. In that same game, I watched Aeneas hold Irvin to 82 yards on 5 catches (not one of Aeneas' better results, to be sure, but he was single-covering Irvin), only to watch the rest of the secondary surrender 203 receiving yards to Kevin Williams. Yeah, who? Jimmy Johnson got fed up and left, well Barry Switzer came in and netted the 'Boys another ring (or tricked Neil O'Donnell into throwing it to him).

Meanwhile, after my first year of fandom, the Cardinals fired Joe Bugel, and brought in Buddy Ryan, who declared they had a winner in town. Yeah, 8-8, then 4-12, and you wrecked the offense. Good job Buddy, you offensive coordinator punching dick. In truth, I had it pretty well. My first 4 years as a fan, Arizona went 26-38. The 4 years before that they'd gone 18-46. Still, you need that ray of hope, and after the 8-8 season was followed with 4-12, I was still looking. It came in Week 2 in '97, when Arizona beat Dallas 25-22, behind the immortal Kent Graham. It was the, to steal from Bill Simmons quoting Rocky 4, "the Russian's been cut!" moment. As you might expect, Dallas got revenge later that year, winning 24-6, sacking Jake Plummer (making career start #3) and Kent Graham 9 times. I think I may have to do a post just about stuff I remember about the Cardinals from my time as a fan thus far. The ineptitude of the '97 offensive line will be discussed.

The critical year was '98. Dallas had curb-stomped Arizona 38-10 in Week 1, but it was Week 11 now, Arizona was 5-4, and this game was on the Cardinals' home turf. Sure, with all the Dallas fans, that didn't mean too much, but you hoped it would mean something. It didn't seem like it would early. Dallas was up 28-7 at the half, but Arizona rallied, and at the end of the game sat on Dallas' 2 yard line, down 35-28. The ball was snapped, Plummer dropped back and threw a fade to Rob Moore in the corner. It was a little underthrown, so Moore turned and reached back for it. The cornerback, Kevin Smith, didn't turn around. Made no attempt to play the ball whatsoever. Instead, he opted to grab Moore's arms and hold them down, preventing him from catching the ball. The refs swallowed the whistle, and Arizona lost. I cursed and raved, and hit things, and got chastised by my mother for all of it. My dad, who'd been a Cards' fan until they left StL, and has more than once expressed regret for somehow passing that particular fandom on to me, just looked sad, and understanding.

Where was the flag? I know they say to let the players decide the game, but calling defensive pass interference there actually allows for that. Kevin Smith comitted a penalty, and got away with it. If the refs do their fucking job, the Cards get the ball on the 1 yard line, and gets one more chance, since the game can't end on a defensive penalty. Maybe they score a touchdown, maybe they don't. If they do, maybe they go for two, get it and win, maybe they fail and lose. If they kick the extra point, maybe it misses, or they still lose in OT. But we'll never know because the Cards got hosed. I was sure it was because they were playing the Cowboys (still am sure of that, in fact). I had been jealously hating the Cowboys before, now I just despised them, everything about them. Sanders' douchebag high-stepping (or goose-stepping as I dubbed it) into the end zone, Irvin's repeated run-ins with the law not seeming to harm his career one bit, goddamn Emmit who I was certain was just a product of his O-line, and their half-domed stadium. What was that? Either have a dome or don't, the middle road is for wusses, and I thought there were no wusses in the Great State of Texas. So I stewed over it.

But things occasionally work out, even for the Arizona Cardinals and their fans. Arizona got in the playoffs, by winning their last 3 games, all on field goals, either as the clock expired or in OT, including a 52-yarder the last week. And who did Arizona get in Round 1? Dallas? How lovely. Actually, not so lovely. Even though Dallas appeared to be the weakest division winner, they had still beaten Arizona 11 of the last 12 times the teams played, and this was in Dallas. There was concern. But Arizona won, handily. 20-7, and Dallas didn't get that 7 until the last few minutes of the game. They got dominated. Emmitt didn't get to 100 yards, Irvin (4 catches, 32 yards) got locked down by Aeneas, who picked off two passes Aikman tried to force in there. Deion tried to play hurt and was useless. Plummer made a big pass play by scrambling from the pocket and chucking it downfield as he was being tackled, for about a 30-yard gain to Frank Sanders. They scored their first TD on Jake seeing the blitz, ignoring it, and shovel passing it to Adrian Murrell as planned. It was a glorious game*, though I was sad my dad couldn't let himself enjoy it even a little. After all, he'd never gotten to see them win a playoff game, and he hated Dallas as much as me. It was OK to savor that, wasn't it? But he wouldn't join in on my jumping and cheering.

It didn't matter too much that Minnesota whomped Arizona next week. It certainly wasn't a fun game, but I knew that the Vikes seriously outclassed Arizona (though I think I printed a newsletter in my software class predicting Arizona would win. What's fandom, if not eternal optimism?). Desides, Arizona had beaten Dallas, in front of all their fans, on national TV. Sure, it was a Chan Gailey coached team, not Switzer or ole Jimmy, but I'd take what I could get. Still, I think something was lost at that point. Arizona had slain the dragon that had haunted my fandom. The Cowboys were in descent at this point. Unfortunately, Arizona was not in ascent, for I could have learned to enjoy the Cardinals giving Dallas a little of their own ass-beating medicine. They were in the same division 3 more years before Arizona was moved to the NFC West. They split those 6 games, each team winning all the games played at their stadium. Arizona's wins were close (13-9, 32-31, 17-10), Dallas' were not (35-7, 48-7, 17-3). Still, these weren't the same unbeatable Cowboys anymore, and the hatred cooled.

Since Arizona moved to the NFC West, they've played Dallas 5 times in the regular season (counting last weekend). Some of those games have been mighty ugly, either because Arizona got crushed (all three losses), or because the teams both played really poorly (the offenses at least). The spark wasn't there for me, and I turned my dislike towards other teams. There were the Rams, who were annoying if only because the StL sportswriters seemed to take great pleasure in writing about how the Rams beat the "Deadbirds", as some of them liked to put it. It was annoying enough that when Arizona crushed the Rams 31-7 in 2004, I think I sent Bernie Miklasz a mocking, sarcastic e-mail to celebrate Arizona's victory. There was San Francisco, who even when they were terrible, could somehow always manage to beat Arizona just when Arizona really needed the win.

As for Dallas, well, I enjoyed their failures when Bill Parcells was the coach, since I've always disliked him for some reason. But Wade Phillips is someone I can't really muster the energy to dislike, especially when his own offensive coordinator makes more money than him. Though I guess he did decide to go with Rob Johnson over Flutie in that Music City Miracle game**, but I keep forgetting that. Romo's ridiculously overhyped for a guy that's no playoff games, but he didn't ask for that. T.O.'s a giant pain in the ass, but that just means the Cowboys have to suffer through his antics. While enjoyable for me, it doesn't induce hatred. Ditto for Pacman Jones. Fortunately, you can always count of the refs to pick you up. They hosed the Cardinals out of two fumbles they forced out of Romo, one by invoking the bullshit Tuck Rule, and the other by, well, nobody seems to know. Dockett hit Romo, he fumbled (all replays showed this), the Cardinals fell on it. Ref, who never whistled the ball dead, runs in and says Cowboys' ball. Whisenhunt wants to challenge, the ref says he can't. At no point does the ref bother to explain to us, the paying audience, why it is still Dallas ball, or why Whisenhunt can't challenge the ruling. We're just left in suspense.

I mean, I'm following this game on ostensibly neutral sites like Deadspin (well, I figure it's neutral now that Leitch is a guest blogger, not editor) and Kissing Suzy Kolber. At best, these are sites populated by people who hate Dallas, not Cardinals' fans, and they're screaming bloody murder. Mike Sando, ESPN's NFC West blogger, said Arizona got hosed. At that point, you could have told me that one of the refs hit Warner with a chair while Wade climbed the ladder to grab the championship belt and the only part of that I wouldn't have believed was Wade Phillips climbing a ladder***. That was all it took, and I was back in my "Goddamn Cowboys, in bed with the refs, trying to screw my team over" mode. When Dallas lost because their special teams stank, I jumped for joy. I had figured Arizona was toast once their "Time out as the ball is snapped" let the field goal kicker hit the game-tying kick, because that's how things go for them. They surprised me though, won the game, and the fact I loathe the Cowboys once more makes it all the sweeter.

The Cowboys are in disarray and it feels so right. Everybody sing! (Now watch Brad Johnson lead them to the Super Bowl. I think he'll do it just to remind Gruden that he had a good QB, before he started this ridiculous carousel he had now. And I say that as someone who likes Jeff Garcia).

* I saw a lot of online reaction on Sunday from Cardinals fans along the lines of "I've been a Cardinals fan for 18 years, this was their biggest win ever!" I can't help but think, "Really? A game in Week 6, in Arizona was bigger than the franchise's first playoff vistory in 50 years, over Dallas, on the road no less?" Fans are such idiots sometimes.

** I totally bought into the Flutie magic. Still do. Surest way to know Flutie's good? Merril Hoge, noted imbecile and Vince Young despiser, bad-mouthed him when he was starting ahead of Brees in San Diego. So did Jason Whitlock for that matter, and this is a guy who keeps stumping for Jeff George, 'cause they played together in college or some shit. Note that Drew Brees hadn't shown anything like what he does these days.

*** No, no, it's not a fat joke! See, Wade wouldn't be able to climb it because T.O. would run up and push the ladder over, saying wasn't devoting enough time to get Owens the ball. Or Jason Garrett would have replaced the ladder with an escalator, so Wade could never reach the belt, letting Garrett get it and present it to Mr. Jones. Jerry, not Adam. Pacman would probably hit someone with it. Actually, so might Jerry if Dallas don't get things straightened out****.

**** Fine, it is a fat joke. Happy?