Explanatory Essay on Dallas Cowboys
America’s Team
There has been much debate over which sports team is the most successful in the United States. Many teams have had their moment in the spotlight. They rise in popularity only to plummet the following year. Right now the Super Bowl Champion New York Giants are the talk of the entire sports world, but give it a few months and everyone outside of the New York Metropolitan area will forget who even won the game. That is how it is with most champions in professional sports. Fewer than 20 percent of Americans know that the Mavericks are the reigning professional basketball champions or that the Cardinals won the most recent World Series. Though these teams have had great success their fan base is mostly local. They have not established a national following. Over the past 50 years the Dallas Cowboys have used a great winning tradition, slick marketing, and modern merchandising techniques to establish themselves as “America’s Team.”
The team was established in 1959 to give the National Football League a presence in the Southwest. The NFL wanted a franchise in Texas to compete with the upstart American Football League [ (Lovitt 6) ]. In steps Texas oil multi-millionaire Clint Murchison. Murchison wanted his new Cowboys to become immediate winners, so he hired an experienced general manager in Tex Schramm and a most sought after young coach by the name of Tom Landry. Shramm and Landry’s mission was to build from scratch a team that could compete with the league’s elite almost immediately. Unfortunately this task was nearly impossible. The other eight teams in the league did their absolute best to ensure that Cowboys would not have access to the most talented players. With no draft picks in their inaugural season the upstart team would have to be assembled from a cast of misfits, has-beens, and underachievers. This did not deter the Cowboy’s brain trust from putting forth their best effort. Tex Schramm’s first order of business was to
There has been much debate over which sports team is the most successful in the United States. Many teams have had their moment in the spotlight. They rise in popularity only to plummet the following year. Right now the Super Bowl Champion New York Giants are the talk of the entire sports world, but give it a few months and everyone outside of the New York Metropolitan area will forget who even won the game. That is how it is with most champions in professional sports. Fewer than 20 percent of Americans know that the Mavericks are the reigning professional basketball champions or that the Cardinals won the most recent World Series. Though these teams have had great success their fan base is mostly local. They have not established a national following. Over the past 50 years the Dallas Cowboys have used a great winning tradition, slick marketing, and modern merchandising techniques to establish themselves as “America’s Team.”
The team was established in 1959 to give the National Football League a presence in the Southwest. The NFL wanted a franchise in Texas to compete with the upstart American Football League [ (Lovitt 6) ]. In steps Texas oil multi-millionaire Clint Murchison. Murchison wanted his new Cowboys to become immediate winners, so he hired an experienced general manager in Tex Schramm and a most sought after young coach by the name of Tom Landry. Shramm and Landry’s mission was to build from scratch a team that could compete with the league’s elite almost immediately. Unfortunately this task was nearly impossible. The other eight teams in the league did their absolute best to ensure that Cowboys would not have access to the most talented players. With no draft picks in their inaugural season the upstart team would have to be assembled from a cast of misfits, has-beens, and underachievers. This did not deter the Cowboy’s brain trust from putting forth their best effort. Tex Schramm’s first order of business was to