“Why are you even watching this? They’re just going to lose.”
This, offered by my lovely football-hating significant other as she passed through the living room on Sunday. The living room is usually a mandated no-fly zone for her on the Lord’s day, not due to some religio-fascist trad wife restrictions but mainly to avoid joy-thieving snipes like this, which she never wastes an opportunity to lob my way. She’s just trolling, of course. But it still gets under my skin. To make matters worse, my kids are in on the gag now too.
“Dak is washed!” “Didn’t they lose to the Giants?” “This is why I like the Chiefs.”
It’s very cool. Definitely funny. And super-helpful in regulating my Cowboys-watching mood fluctuations.
“I’ll have you know they’re up by 14, and it’s in the fourth quarter,” I replied smugly. “They’re not going to lose this game.”
But here’s the deal. The reason I willfully entered a legally binding forever partnership with this woman, despite her disdain for the gridiron game, is that she’s smarter than I am. About a million and a half situations occur in a day that prove this point, but the most relevant to this exchange is that she simply knows better than to continuously seek happiness in situations that only foster disappointment.
Yes, she was right. Half an hour later, I sat dumbfounded, blinking back tears, staring at the improbable (but wholly predictable) 33-30 final score in the noon contest between the Arizona Cardinals and my abusive boyfriend, the Dallas Cowboys. Arizona, injury depleted as they were, bewilderingly scored four straight touchdowns late in the game in an insane comeback. There was a brief tease of misguided hope as a missed walk-off extra point on AZ’s final TD sent the contest to overtime, but self-proclaimed GOTI (Greatest Offense There Is) managed just a single yard in their OT possession, yielding the game-winning kick to the Birds. Sunday’s victory over Dallas notches the middling desert squad’s ninth win in their last 10 games against Dallas, making the Cowboys one of the few teams they’re actually capable of beating. In fact, Arizona has only four wins in their last 18 games going back to last year, and two of those wins were at AT&T Stadium against the ’Boys. To my beloved’s credit, when it was finally over, she left the irresistible “I told you so,” sitting there untouched on the tee.
Yet her initial question still reverberates in my brain. I’ve repeated it over and over like a hopeless mantra. Why do I watch? They do just lose.
I suppose the easy answer is sports — just like music, or characters in a book, or cartoon bears — is simply better when you care. The same thing that causes the pain of defeat gives the euphoria of victory. To guard against the former, I typically straddle a line somewhere between a glimmer of hopefulness and pragmatic realism. Three decades of conditioning have done their work on me. A generation of mediocrity has limited how high I let my expectations get. I want the Cowboys to do well but never expect them to.
I suppose this is what makes Sunday’s debacle so painful. It’s not that the loss was so unexpected, inexcusable, and embarrassing, though it certainly was those things. It’s that it represents more than another tick on the wrong side of the win-loss ledger. It’s that it makes it undeniable that this team is just not what we thought they were going to be before Week 1. I somehow broke my rule of guarded optimism and went all-in on guzzling Cowboys Kool-Aid.
Sure, I can blame basically the entirety of NFL media for ginning up the snake oil, yet I still willfully bought it, drank it, and wished for it to cure the sickness in my Cowboys heart. I am again the fool, Charlie Brown on his back, staring up at Jerry Jones holding the football he yanked away before my foot could make contact.
It is appropriate that the final dousing of my Super Bowl aspirations was at the hands of those ding-dong Cardinals. Sure, there’s half a season left, Dallas is only a game and a half back in the division race and likely still have the best odds at the NFC East crown, but make no mistake: This ain’t a Super Bowl team. The defense is far from fixed and might actually be worse than it was a year ago, when it was the worst defense in franchise history. Worse than the defense, however, is just how bad this coaching staff is. I have become quite used to coaching not being an advantage for this team, but Brian Schottenhiemer and his staff aren’t even neutral. They are a dramatic net negative. Schotty is a coward as a playcaller, and his gutless approach to the game has cost this team directly in at least three of Dallas’ five losses. Give up run plays to cede punts, a refusal to put the ball in the air to settle for 60-plus-yard field goals, bewildering clock management, spineless fourth and short hard counts — all of these illustrate why a man with 25 years of coaching experience was given his first shot at being a head coach just last year. He’s absolutely in over his stupid visor.
He’s been the Cowboys HC for only a season and a half, and I already have built more hate for him than it took Jason Garrett a full decade to earn. From his vapid youth-minister vibe to his forced cool-guy schtick, the fact that he looks like he’s wearing one of those kitschy novelty visors with the faux Guy Fieri hair coming out of the top — which, I suppose, is the best attempt that a guy whose whole aura screams puka shell necklace and flops can make at cosplaying a legitimate NFL head coach — I’ve come to despise nearly everything about him. He claimed after the Cardinals loss that he was a “problem solver.” Buddy, you are the problem.
If we lived in a just world, he would have lost his job on Monday. But we certainly don’t live in a just world. So, Schotty will continue to neuter an elite quarterback in his prime, settle for field goals that must travel 3/4s the length of the field, and 1-yard runs up the middle his way to a 7-8 record, an NFC East title, and a flagrant ass-beating at the hands of the Niners or the Bears in the Wild Card round. I’ve just got to get back to the place where I won’t care as much when it happens.
