Dallas Cowboys

Lore & Background

The Cowboys' story is inseparable from the story of Dallas itself. When the team arrived in the early 1960s, the metroplex was a growing oil-and-rail hub looking for a civic identity. Tom Landry, the quiet, meticulous coach who built the franchise from a struggling AFL afterthought into a dynasty, gave the city something to rally around. The '70s and early '80s saw the Cowboys become a national brand—Roger Staubach's Hail Mary, the '70s dynasty with Landry's methodical offense, and the franchise's meteoric rise in television ratings. They were, in the words of the era, 'America's Team,' and the nickname stuck even after the title window closed. Jones transformed the Cowboys from a respected but aging franchise into a multimedia spectacle: the first NFL team to play on a national TV network year-round, the face of a billion-dollar brand, and the engine of a stadium-building boom in Arlington. Jones's era brought the '90s dynasty—Troy Aikman, Emmitt Smith, Michael Irvin, Deion Sanders—four Super Bowls in five years, and a cultural footprint that stretched far beyond the gridiron. For the Dallas Stars, the Cowboys are both a benchmark and a shadow. The Stars entered the NHL in 1993, the same year the Cowboys won their third consecutive Super Bowl. The franchise had to build its identity in a market where the Cowboys already owned the Sunday ritual, the tailgate culture, and the civic pride. The Stars' early struggles in the '90s and their eventual rise in the 2000s were, in part, a story of earning a place in a fan culture that had been shaped by football for three decades. The rivalry isn't on the field—it's for the soul of the city's sporting identity.

In Their Own Story

It's a Saturday in November, and the sky over Arlington is that flat, pale Texas blue that never quite commits to a season. The parking lots around AT&T Stadium are a sea of white—white jerseys, white hats, white flags snapping in the dry wind off the I-30 corridor. A kid in a size-small #28 Irvin jersey chases a football that's rolled into the gravel between rows. His dad is already three rows back, arguing with a stranger about whether the offensive line should double-team. The smell is diesel and hot dogs and the faint chemical tang of the new concrete still cooling in the shade of the upper deck. The organ swells—'Hail to the Chief,' then the Cowboys walkout, and the noise is a physical thing, a wall of sound that you feel in your sternum. The jumbotron shows a replay of a play from last week, and the crowd roars as if it just happened. A woman in the 200-level clinks her beer can against the stranger beside her. No one knows the stranger's name. It doesn't matter. They are both wearing white. They are both, for the next three hours, part of the same organism. Somewhere across town, in a smaller arena with a different smell—cold air, rubber, the sharp bite of Zamboni fluid—a different kind of roar is building. But tonight, the city belongs to the dome.

Reader's Guide

Walk into AT&T Stadium on a Cowboys home game and the first thing that hits you is the scale. The air is warm, recycled, carrying the faint grease-and-salt scent of a million hot dogs. You find your seat, and the dome above you is a smooth white curve that swallows the sky, and the field below is a perfect emerald rectangle that looks almost too clean to be real. The noise is the thing. It's not like a hockey arena, where the sound bounces off close walls and hits you in the cranium. Here, the sound is a wave. It rolls. You feel it build in your chest before you hear it crest. A big play and the whole bowl detonates, then settles into a low, rolling murmur that never fully stops. Now imagine that same energy, compressed. A smaller arena. The air is cold on your face. The boards are close enough to touch. The sound is a wall, not a wave, and it hits you in the teeth. The Stars bring that. The Cowboys gave Dallas the habit of showing up, of wearing the colors, of treating a Saturday afternoon as sacred. The Stars just ask you to do it on a Tuesday night, in a smaller room, with a puck instead of a ball. The pull is the same. The pride is the same. You just need to buy the ticket.

Did You Know?

• AT&T Stadium, home to the Cowboys since 2009, features a fully retractable roof and was one of the first NFL stadiums to incorporate a complete dome structure, allowing games to be played in any Texas weather.
• The Cowboys' 1993 Super Bowl XXVIII victory over the Buffalo Bills was their third consecutive championship, a streak that made the franchise the most dominant team in NFL history at that point.