The Cowboys Last Success Turns 25
Sometimes you wake up and choose violence. Kyler Murray was recently asked why he, a Texas native, never liked the Cowboys. He replied with the quote above. As a…I guess “Middle-Aged” Millennial who remembers the Cowboys Super Bowls of the 90’s (faintly), it took me a second to realize that yes, to Kyler, the Cowboys would have always been ass. So let’s look at some fun facts about the Cowboys current championship drought. Hell, the “got past the divisional round” drought. Starting in January of ’96:
-Tom Brady would not throw a pass at Michigan until the following fall of ’96. He is now the oldest and most decorated player in NFL history.
-The Texans did not exist yet, because the Houston Oilers still did, though not for long
-The Baltimore Ravens were officially established after the Super Bowl, meaning the Cowboys drought is longer than both the Titans and Ravens existences. It is merely a year younger than the Panthers and Jaguars.
-Seinfeld was the #1 show on television. Now the Cowboys drought is so old even Seinfeld wouldn’t date it
-Gogurt, the best form of yogurt, would not be introduced to the market for 3 more years
-The Monica Lewinski Scandal wouldn’t happen for another 3 years
-Princess Diana was still alive
-Limp Bizkit would not release their debut album for another 2 years
-Mike Vrabel, the current head coach of the Titans, would not be picked until the ’97 NFL draft
-The XFL has existed and died twice in the time frame
-Josh McDaniels would not coach at any job until ’99
-Dexter’s Laboratory would debut on TV two months after the Super Bowl
-“Stone Cold” Steve Austin would not debut his character for another few months
-The first Harry Potter book would not be published until ’97
-The Star Wars prequels would not exist for another 4 years
-The first book of A Song of Ice and Fire wouldn’t be published until August of ’96
-Chris Farley was still alive
-The Arizona Diamondbacks and Tampa Bay Rays did not exist
-The Seahawks were an AFC team
-Nobody had ever heard MMMBop yet. Nor Barbie Girl. Or the Spice Girls. Or Britney Spears. Nor All Star. Tupac and Biggie were still alive.
-The Simpsons was still good. Futurama didn’t exist for 4 more years.
-The Twin Towers existed
-Some of you reading this may not have existed yet. Raise your hand if you are younger than the Cowboys drought!
-Braveheart would not be released until later that year. Same with Space Jam.
-Kobe Bryant would not be drafted for several more months
Anyway, sometimes I like to think about this when the Giants make me sad. Perks me right back up. A literal quarter-century since they got out of the divisional round. You really can’t call the fans bandwagoners anymore. Now they are just old fools.
anyone gonna let me bandwagon off the cowboys?
This entire write-up is savage, and I’m here for it all day. Older than Stone Cold Steve Austin… Bah gawd.
“ Raise your hand if you are younger than the Cowboys drought”
Born October 96, so just barely!
Wayne Gretzky was still playing, with two teams he could compete against being the Hartford Whalers and first Winnipeg Jets.
Weird Al still had his mustache and glasses (though he has sometimes sported facial hair since initially shaving it off).
– Coldplay’s “Clocks” (which began to play, unwanted, in my head on seeing the last panel) would not assault our eardrums for another 7 years. Coldplay had not even formed yet! The good old days…
I wasn’t big into football in the 90s, but I can still remember my favorite Cowboys Super Bowl moment.
https://youtu.be/NTeqQY_T2mE
I don’t even hate the Cowboys, I just love the idea of an arrogant ass getting put in his place.
My previous yardstick of “things that have gone on forever with no end in sight” is Duke Nukem Forever. It entered development in 1996, and was released a decade ago.
Born in August of 97 just like Kyler here!
I was not planning on being assaulted this morning but here we are. Now I must yell at the children to get off my lawn.
Only thing I have remembered about the 1990s Cowboys was Deion Sanders saying “both” in a Domino Pizza commercial.
Peyton Manning and Randy Moss both started and finished their careers while also being put into the HOF since then.
Honestly the thing that surprised me most is that Dallas hasn’t made it past the divisional round since ’95. I don’t know why, but I thought they had made an NFC Championship at some point since then lmao.
I’ve always thought about Super Bowl droughts… here’s one way of thinking about them: starting today, it will take 32 years minimum for every team currently in existence to win the Super Bowl once… and you know some team is going to win more than once in that time span… that means there is one team out there that won’t win the Super Bowl until 2053 or later. I hope that team is the Cowboys! (Will probably be the Browns and Lions).
That’s my biggest problem with college football. All else being equal (HAHAHAHAHA), your school will win it all less than once a century….
Oh, and in two of the three Cowboys’ titles in the 90s, the two point conversion was not yet a rule. It was only put in place in 1994.
Imagine Super Bowl LI without the 2-pt attempt…
Why would you do this…
STOP IT, DAVE
– Steve McNair and Kordell Stewart had just started their NFL careers
– There had only been one Space Shuttle disaster (Columbia wouldn’t happen until 2003)
– Amazon only sold books (not even CDs or videos)
– The “dot-com” bubble was only in its infancy
Well, I feel thoroughly geriatric now. Thanks for that.
Cowboys drought is older than me, they’ve always been ass to me!
– In January of ’95, Mystery Science Theater 3000(where I got my pseudonym) was still on season 6 and the first full season with Mike as the main host.
– Jurassic Park was still the highest grossing film of all time, as Titanic wouldn’t be released until December of ’97.
– Lord of the Rings was still mostly known to uber-nerds, as the film series didn’t start until 2001.
Legendary England football anthem ‘Three Lions’ was only UK #1 once back then, for Euro’96. The song has scored three more top spots under its belt, the only song to make #1 four separate times. Even Bohemian Rhapsody only made it twice.
* Barack Obama had not yet even entered politics, as he first won elected office in November 1996.
This might just be my favorite thing ever. This list should be periodically updated with fun facts. All while reminding “Dem Boys” that 1) no, they are not the greatest franchise ever 2) no, they probably won’t win the Super Bowl this year (applicable every year), and 3) their misery is everyone else’s joy.
Also to throw this out there, Jason Garrett is the Cowboys winningest coach over the last 25 years. He won more regular season games than both Barry Switzer and Jimmy Johnson did with the Cowboys – combined. He’s also the second losingest coach in history and is second in tenure to only Tom Landry. For all of his accomplishments and for all the marvelous things the Cowboys have(n’t) done in the last 25 years, they deserve a round of applause.
I could believe that about Barry Switzer, but I’m surprised to hear that about Jimmy Johnson, let alone the two combined.
HOT DAMN! MY SISTER JUST GAVE ME THAT VERY SAME SUNDIAL!
December ’96 here. Always found it odd that “America’s Team” was so mediocre.
Even as a 49ers fan I feel for Cowboys fans, in spite of them winning a SB more recently, they haven’t had the same amount of success since that time whereas I can at least wallow in some close SB and NFC title game losses.
Look on the bright side, at least you guys are not Bears fans. The Bears haven’t been relevant since 85
Nah, they made a Super Bowl in 06 and at least one NFCCG since, they’ve been sporadically relevant since the mid-90’s
As a Bears fan, I disagree…..but as a logical person, I hate that you made me use logic and agree with you. 🙂
You feeling old? My dad brought home a Texas Instruments calculator, one of the very first of its kind, in 1974.
It cost $200 in 1974 dollars and could do the same stuff as the free calculator that comes with Windows.
There were no electronic calculators before 1972. I was learning math for several years before then.
As someone who grew up around far too many Cowboys bandwagon fans and lost a dollar in elementary school betting on the Bills to beat them in the Super Bowl:
Hahahahahahahahahahahahahaha
i was born in 1999 lol
Not to defend the Cowboys or their fans*, but honestly to my mind the more surprising/even less justifiable large national fanbase has to be the Dolphins. I am not a young man. My hairs that aren’t falling out each time I shower are cutting out the middleman and going straight to white. But I can vividly remember the Cowboys 90’s dominance. I would have been about 8 the last time the Dolphins were in a Super Bowl and I doubt I would have been interested yet, and I wasn’t even alive the last time they won one. How have they stayed in the ranks of the teams with massive rando fanbases everywhere (Steelers, Packers, Cowboys) off of fumes that ancient?
* With the Cowboys I always assumed that like the Yankees in baseball, there’s a real distinction between the local fans (from or with recent family ties to Northern Texas) and the rando national fans, where the former are a bit more realistic and even fatalistic about their team and the latter are the insufferable bandwagoners everyone thinks of when you say Cowboys fans. Is there anything to that?
Speaking of which, the Giants QB that time? Can’t believe they won 10 games with Kanell running the offense.