The Dallas Cowboys are no longer the Cowboys of 1990s. We all know that. Even the younger players on the team know that. As long as Tony Romo continues to find ways to lose games and the Cowboys prove they lack toughness, they will not return to the top of the football universe.
Yet Dallas continues to attract the same amount of attention and has as rabid a fan base as ever. Despite the fact that his team has not advanced beyond the Divisional round of the playoffs since it won the Super Bowl in 1996, Jerry Jones continues to rake in the cash. According to Deion Sanders, he has done so by setting false expectations for the team year after year.
“You got to give your hats off to Jerry Jones,” Sanders said Wednesday on his NFL Network show. “He creates this persona, this image that this team has a chance. They’re going to win it all every year. And that says a lot from the ownership position. But I don’t think they think about, ‘Hey, we’re going to the Super Bowl.’ It’s not like that. ‘We just got to get in the playoffs and anything can happen.’ So the expectations has lessened.”
In other words, Sanders thinks ownership is convincing the fans of something that even they don’t believe in. Romo and company have done some reassuring as well, but it’s tough to tell if Deion is saying this as a back-handed compliment. Whether Jones believes he has assembled a Super Bowl contender or not, it’s his job to make sure the fan base thinks he has. The expectation has not lessened in Big D — only the results have.
