There is finally something that I can wholeheartedly agree with Ed Rendell about, even though Rendell is not from Jersey and therefore knows nothing about anything.
Former Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell said Gov. Chris Christie’s unapologetic love for the Dallas Cowboys is “pathetic,” adding that it’s rooted in a “basic inferiority complex.”
“If you are a Jerseyite or a Pennsylvanian and you’re rooting for the Cowboys, it means you’re not secure in yourself and you wanted to root for a team that was a team in your youth that was a constant winner,” the Philadelphia Eagles fan said Thursday on a radio show.
I knew kids who rooted for the Cowboys while we were growing up in Jersey. We viewed them as pathetic “winner-pickers” and held them in contempt.
Most of the born and raised Cowgirl fans around the Philly area are just plain a-holes. They picked Dallas because they like being dicks.
That obviously is Christie in a nut shell.
Exactly.
Let the intra-party, post-CRapnibus healing begin!
My husband has always despised the Cowboys, especially when they were called, “America’s Team”. He says he roots for Cincinnati and whomever is playing the Cowboys.
We all root for whomever is playing the Cowboys.
I’m fairly sure only Texans and bandwagoners like the Cowboys.
There’s something else that goes on these days with the excessive Cowboy worship – especially in the sports media. And that is a right-wing authoritarian love of Jerry Jones.
They love that he doesn’t flaunts the NFL rules – in the same way they love it when the GOP flaunts laws they don’t agree with when in power. But they also love the way he throws his power around in his club – dictating which coach calls plays, which coaches are hired, playing strategy, and possibly calling specific plays. They love how he breaks decades of tradition and protocol and actually walks the sidelines talking to players and coaches during the game. They love how he’s the primary media spokesperson for the team, announcing any changes in coaching philosophies or who will start next week. They love the way he acts the celebrity at every possibility, appearing in ads and as a celebrity guest actor on TV shows.
And, though they won’t say it in public, they love the way he runs his stable of thoroughbred darkies the way a plantation owner would. You’ll never see a black face as a head coach or coordinator role on the Cowboys, but perhaps in a much lesser role as a house negro. They love to watch the darkies play but they have to know their place.
The sad part is that so many of the media really embrace this stuff. Even the seemingly somewhat liberal guys like SI writer Peter King (not to be confused with the evil Peter King in Congress) just genuflect in front of the altar of Jerry Jones week after week. Yes, I suppose they need to be nice to him to maintain “access”, etc., but that doesn’t explain why the Cowboys get 5x the news coverage of any other team for the same event. When the team started 1-7 a few years ago the national sports media acted like it was a national calamity, although this is a team that hasn’t been special for a long time, with 1 playoff win since 1996. You don’t see the media writing stories on who Matt Ryan is dating but they do all the time for Tony Romo – Ryan being a somewhat better QB over the same time period for a team that has been significantly better.
It’s very similar to the way the national sports media covers the NY Yankees at the same level of depth that the rest of the nation covers their local teams. But with the Yankees you can at least understand it based on their track record of winning. Yes, it’s extremely annoying that the national sports media acts like everyone should be deeply concerned when the Yankees miss the playoffs, but given their NY-centric nature and the team record we kind of get it.
There is no such explanation for the similar treatment the Cowboys get. There are other teams that have large national followings – Green Bay, Pittsburgh, the NY Giants, and Chicago, with New England emerging. Those teams do get the same kind of TV ratings but you don’t see them getting the same kind of fawning over-coverage that the Cowboys get. Nope, the only reason is a sick devotion to Jerry Jones’ style of old white boy management.
In the 70’s and 80’s a number of my friends were foreign students and I noticed that most of them rooted for the Dallas Cowboys.
After talking to them about their evil ways I realized that they were rooting for the Cowboys because they actually believed the hype about the Cowboys being “America’s team.” Being a Cowboy fan was a conscious act of assimilation with the American culture.