The Toughest Part About Being a Cowboys Fan is Listening to Other Cowboys Fans

 By Diego Garcia III | Editor of The Brownsville Beacon

The worst part of being a Cowboys fan who was around in the 1990's is remembering what it was to be a fan when your favorite team was powerful, feared, and respected. It is difficult to see your favorite team put such an underperforming, underachieving product on the field. 

A close second is all the preseason hype and all the predictions of the talking heads and NFL analysts who constantly predict the Cowboys are going to be a force to be reckoned with. Several even went as far as predicting an appearance in this year's Super Bowl for the beleaguered Dallas football team. If I had a nickel for every time I cringed at a commentator predicting a Cowboys win, I'd have a whole lot of nickels.

The Cowboys management team seems to be perfectly happy putting the mediocre product it puts out on the field. The Jones family doesn't seem too worried about winning so long as the fans keep buying tickets, caps, jerseys, nachos, and tickets that lead to a sell-out every Sunday. The Cowboys consistently top the list of most valuable sports franchises, currently topping the list at 5.5 billion dollars, besting the next closest NFL team by 1.4 billion dollars. Who needs a Lombardi Trophy at the end of the season as long as you're still the most valuable NFL franchise by over a billion dollars?

What's worse is fans are just as apathetic and ignorant about winning as management. Every year — no, scratch that — before every game, social media fan pages explode with Cowboys "superfans" who think the team is going to annihilate the competition and steamroll every other team on their way to the Super Bowl. If you visit the official Dallas Cowboys page, you'll see the rantings and ramblings of these idiotic "superfans" who think fans who complain should just shut up, pump their fists, and wave their big foam fingers in the air and cheer the team regardless of the outcome. Win, lose, or draw, these fans love reminding you they are Dallas Cowboys fans for life, often times signing off their posts with the hashtag "DC4L."

Often times these ridiculous "superfans" will say things like this gem. They'll say, "you should stop following the team, you're nothing but a bandwagon, or a fair-weather fan." I'd like to clear up a couple of things. First of all, there's no such thing as a bandwagon Cowboys fan. A bandwagon fan implies the person is a fan of a team that is succeeding and doing well. The Cowboys haven't done well for the better part of a generation. Why would anybody who is rooting for the Cowboys be considered a bandwagon fan if the team has done nothing but fall flat on their faces year after year?

Also, I'll continue with the obvious: if I'm rooting for a team and complaining about their lackluster performance, that means I am a legitimate fan and I want them to do better. If I was a bandwagon fan, I would have changed my alliance to the Patriots, or the Chiefs, or to another winning team. A true fan wants the team to win, but they also complain when their favorite team is doing poorly.

I was born in 1977. I have been around to see the Cowboys win the Super Bowl three times in the 90's. It would be nice to see the team do well again. It really is a pity how poorly such a talented group of athletes performs. For years, I subscribed to the theory of poor coaching. I firmly believed the team had turned a corner when they fired Jason Garrett and hired Mike McCarthy. I was wrong. I understand several players are injured, but others aren't. It seems as if some players are too busy trying to protect their investment.

The simple fact is the team has given up playing for this staff. The team is playing with no heart; with no desire to win. Gone are the days of Michael Irvin pumping his chest and yelling at his teammates on the sideline. Gone are the days of Emmitt Smith playing injured and scoring a touchdown with a separated shoulder. Andy Dalton was knocked out of last week's game due to a dirty hit by a Washington defensive player, and his teammates just stood there and hung their heads in defeat without so much as a shove for the Washington player.

And yet it circles back to the fans. If the fans don't demand the team perform better, management will be perfectly happy putting the JV on the field to take on professionals. The Cowboys released Dontari Poe this week due to poor performance, but the flag waving, false-patriotic fans were happier that he was released because he was the only Cowboy who knelt during the National Anthem. 

America's Team doesn't kneel for the National Anthem. They don't win all that much, either, but as long as they are all standing, the "superfans" will keep on supporting the team, win, lose, or draw.

It is apparent the worst part of being a Cowboys fan isn't remembering the halcyon days when they were winning, the worst part is dealing with delusional fans who think the team can do no wrong when they haven't done a whole lot right over the last two and a half decades. 

It turns out Stephen A. Smith isn't wrong about Cowboys fans after all.