OPINION: Sports: Dallas Cowboys are still media kings
Sep. 29—In a land blessed abundantly with pro sports teams, the franchise on top is still the men wearing the star.
A new study shows the Dallas Cowboys, despite more than two decades of spotty on-field success under Jerry Jones are, the most popular sports team when it comes to Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. Of the 152 pro franchises competing, more people are Googling for the Pokes than any other.
That surprises me a little after the Super Bowl domination of the New England Patriots, the emergence of Partick Mahomes and the Kansas City Chiefs and the 2022 Super Bowl king Los Angeles Rams, but the Cowboys still have an undeniable mystique that puts them ahead of the pack.
Dallas has more than 16.6 million followers on the aforementioned social media sites and are No. 1 in seven states. No other team was the most searched in more than three states.
The states where the Cowboys attract the most interest include Texas, New Mexico and Arkansas, which makes sense because of their proximity to Jerry World, but also Idaho, Mississippi, New Jersey and Virginia.
The Denver Broncos and Minnesota Vikings, who were on top in three states, are the next most popular NFL teams. Other pro franchises leading in three states are the Atlanta Braves and Boston Celtics.
The Cowboys' popularity also translates to people coming out to fill the 90,000 seats at AT&T Stadium. For the past 10 years Dallas has averaged 108.1% of capacity. There's plenty of standing room in the huge facility and a massive screen on which to view the action taking place on the turf below.
Your Cowboys have certainly come a long way from their lowly beginnings as a winless expansion team in 1960. The largest crowd at the Cotton Bowl for any home game that season was 30,000. When the Pokes met the 49ers late in that dismal season, the attendance was an estimated 10,000. Dallas lost every home game that year and fledgeling owner Clint Murchison Jr.'s first team finished 0-11-1.
Despite the lack of success on the field, Murchison held on to his 36-year-old coach, Tom Landry.
The man who deserves much of the credit for making the Dallas Cowboys stand out from the rest of the NFL is Tex Schramm, the team's original president and general manager. Like Landry, Schramm is a member of the NFL Hall of Fame, and his vision not only helped shine the spotlight on the Pokes, but as head of the Competition Committee impacted the league as a whole.
His ideas included bringing instant replay to the NFL, miking officials and instituting overtime in regular season games. The Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders were formed under his watch and the Cowboys' Thanksgiving Day game also had a lot to do with him.
The story goes, the league asked the Dallas Cowboys to host a Turkey Day game which would follow the traditional Detroit Lions Thanksgiving affair. Shramm said he would do it, but only if Dallas could be the home team every year. The result was a tremendous amount of national television exposure in a day before Monday Night Football and cable channels.
Don Shula, who holds the NFL record for wins as a head coach, said of Schramm:
"I truly believe that he had as much, or more, to do with the success of professional football as anyone who has been connected with the league."
The current owner Jerry Jones has never been one of my favorite sports figures, but he certainly turned the money-making Cowboys into an even more lucrative business. And he oversaw the building of the current stadium which favors the Starship Enterprise. But any success the Cowboys have today rests on the shoulders of Murchison, Schramm and Landry, whose 29 years in control were among the most successful in sports history.
