DMN: Cowboys' start promising … even in August

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Cowboys' start promising … even in August

10:43 PM CDT on Monday, August 20, 2007

IRVING – At halftime of the Cowboys-Broncos scrimmage Saturday night, I hooked up with a pal from Denver I hadn't seen in years. He'd left a TV job in New York and returned to his Mile High roots to write newspaper columns, thereby illustrating how working in the Big Apple will warp a guy's mind.

The intermission scoreboard at Texas Stadium showed Cowboys 24, Denver 6, and the score reflected who was doing what to whom, and how thoroughly they were doing it. Everyone saw it as one-sided as a calf rope. The audience included folks in Denver watching over the miracle of television and who also saw, at a minimum, 92 commercials interrupted by spasms of football.

The folks in Denver were not as pleased with the contest as the people in Dallas because, well, it was going poorly for their side. And they didn't like it. The reason I know is because my pal had his computer on and presto, there arrived an e-mail from a Denver fan.

His message said: "I've been watching and I can't help myself. I've got to say it. This team is awful! The players stink!"

So there you have it. Denver is out of it as of Aug. 18 after losing its first preseason game.

"Hey, I guess the Cowboys are going to the Super Bowl," a fellow said to me Sunday after church. He was half-serious, which meant that he really didn't think the idea was pure fiction.

There you have the other side. The 2-0 Cowboys are ultimate game-bound.

The ultra-passionate believe in a future of gloom or glitter when their team fails to win or tie even during exercises designed to warm up vets and try out the rest. Yet August is the great deceiver, the month of mirages if you're foolish enough to forecast using its results. Won-lost records are irrelevant. Some mega-stars never play a down. Others rarely appear in more than two series. Few play beyond two quarters. No one goes the distance, therefore no team plays at full strength so that whatever happens is almost worthless to assign value.

I recall an instance where a couple of NFL rookies forgot that. A 30-28 victory over Houston clinched a 3-1 preseason for the Cowboys after which their coach and owner ran to the Texas Stadium tunnel hand in hand, whooping and laughing in a display of manly joy. The 1989 team then proceeded to win all but 15 of 16 games for newcomers Jerry Jones and Jimmy Johnson.