I have a neurological condition that makes me hate the Dallas Cowboys. It’s hereditary. Maybe a little bit of nurture versus nature. I entered the world with Miller High Life in one hand and a “Go Birds” pouring out of my lungs.
It’s because of this condition that I can’t stand the sight of a blue star. See, the City of Brotherly Love is ironically built on a strong foundation of hate. We hate with the best of them. Blame it on the Founding Fathers, the OG haters. If hate were a renewable energy source, we’d power homes across the world in one Sunday afternoon at Lincoln Financial Field.
Philadelphians dislike the Atlanta Braves, can’t stand the Pittsburgh Penguins, and have a special place in hell reserved for the Boston Celtics. But the Dallas Cowboys are different. We deeply despise the Cowboys. So deeply it echoes through our bones. It’s generational hate. It’s a hate that could feed families. The kind of hate that makes my mom bring out the special curse words (which are just normal curse words for the rest of us). Hating the Dallas Cowboys is so innate to our identity as Philadelphians, like calling the beach the shore.
My neurological condition is built on irrational loathing, which honestly is the best part about being a sports fan. Not the deep, dark harmful kind of hate. The fun kind of distaste where you say “Who’s that guy? I don’t like him” and root against him on the football field for the next 5 years.
I have a buddy who despises Phillip Rivers simply because he “doesn’t like his face.” Beautiful. That’s all it takes. As a man who is triggered at the sight of Eli Manning’s post-interception face, I get how an annoying mug is enough to go off of.
As Silk Robinson said in Chappelle’s Show’s Player Haters Ball, “I hate you, I hate you, I don’t even know you, and I hate your guts. I hope all the bad things in life happen to you and no one else but you.” That’s how I feel about Dallas.
This Monday Night, the Philadelphia Eagles (the season’s most tragic team) will take on the Dallas Cowboys (in the running for season’s most tragic team) in what can best be described as a SlopFest. Or when two bald eagles lock talons and plummet towards the earth. The Birds are bad, but my condition also makes it so that I have to watch every single game they play and cheer them on, no matter the agony it brings me, while my lovely girlfriend goes to bed early so she doesn’t have to see the love of her life throw one of her nice pillows at the wall in frustration.
It’s a must-win game for both teams, especially the Eagles, who will be playing NFC East opponents for the next three weeks straight (which is sure to be the least exciting football you’ve ever watched). So what better time to try to describe why I hate Dallas. And why I’d rather spend eternity driving with the windows down behind an open trash truck than see the Cowboys be successful.
Anyway, here are 5 reasons to hate the Cowboys, ranked in ascending order of hateration.
5. They Attract the Worst Kinds of Fans
I have yet to meet a Cowboys fan from Dallas, although I’m sure they exist. And for Cowboys fans in your motherland, I have a strong dislike but moderate respect for you. The fans I know mostly exist on the internet or in an Applebee’s parking lot strolling around in a Michael Irvin jersey begging for someone to yell at them (this is city agnostic, I’m talking any Applebees, anytime).
They usually don’t wear only a single piece of Cowboys garb. They are in full Cowboys glam, decked out in blue and white pants, a Dallas fitted hat (bonus points for a ten-gallon), and a car decal that says America’s Team.
These Cowboys fans are as flashy as they are delusional. Most of them are adults who grew up in the 1990s when the Cowboys were at the peak of their powers. They needed a team to latch onto, preferably one that won often so they could feel good about themselves. It’s like being a die-hard Chicago Bulls fan because you watched Michael Jordan even though you live in Topeka, Kansas. They love a bandwagon. And worst of all, they ruin a perfectly good Applebee’s experience.
The other side of Cowboys fandom is drenched in wealth. The guys who got rich from oil or gas or just having parents. They spend an insane amount of money to see the team in Jerry World (more on this later) and love saying things like “How ‘bout them Cowboys” while eating a steak the size of Rhode Island. Those dudes stink.
4. The Media Loves Them
This year is Dallas’ year. As was last year and the year before. But despite being in the year that is supposed to be theirs, the year never comes. It’s like that Pink Floyd lyric, “You run, and you run to catch up with the sun, but it’s sinking.”
Every year, Dallas dominates the offseason with sky-high expectations that they are ill-equipped to meet. They soak up space on podcasts, sports talk shows, and words out of Stephen A. Smith’s mouth. They get more airtime than oxygen despite their long-term mediocrity. It’s like if, for some reason, they kept giving Oscars to the movie Wedding Crashers. Like, that movie came out a while ago and also I’m pretty sure it doesn’t deserve this recognition.
As Jerry Jones said in 2014 (more on him later), “We’re still the most popular TV show there is on television.” And honestly he’s right to a degree. The Cowboys give us enough drama to keep things interesting. But they haven’t had enough recent success to be taken this seriously. It’s like if Ja Rule said he was dropping an album and that’s all anyone talked about.
3. They Are Pretentious
Those cold blue and white uniforms make the Cowboys look like a PowerPoint presentation your boss threw together 10 minutes before the company-wide meeting. But Dallas believes in the star. The symbol affixed to their helmet that asserts their chosen right as America’s Team. It’s like me getting a “World’s Most Handsome Guy” tattoo on my forehead (memo to self: explore cost of getting World’s Most Handsome Guy tattoo).
Dallas’ entitlement trickles down from ownership to their players. They’ve employed many an asshole, from the perpetually sweaty Michael Irvin, popcorn-guzzling Terrell Owens (who is different than Eagles T.O., you leave Eagles TO alone), Dez Bryant who quite literally cannot catch a break, Micah Parsons, who loves football a little bit less than podcasting, and George Pickens, a man who never met a temper he didn’t tantrum.
Calling yourself “America’s Team” is like giving yourself a nickname in college. Like, we’re not all going to call you “Cool Guy Gary.” It’s clunky and honestly doesn’t describe you, Gary. The irony of America’s Team is how the team’s trajectory aligns with the decline of its namesake. Have you seen America lately? Things aren’t going great!
2. They are Delusional
This is award-winning actor and famed ballet slanderer Timothee Chalamet:
The Dallas Cowboys have not made an NFC Championship Game in his lifetime. And he’s been in a bunch of movies. Like so many movies. Have you seen Dune or Dune 2? They’re making a Dune 3, and Dallas still hasn’t made it to an NFC Championship Game. There are now more Dunes than back-to-back playoff wins for Dallas in the last 31 years.
Frozen in the opulence of the mid-90s Clinton era sits “them Cowboys.” They’re like an old steakhouse that people used to go to for nice dinners in 1995, but 30 years later it’s in a mall across from a Spencer’s Gifts where they still serve a $50 baked potato and ribeye on one of those platters that comes out sizzling. The Cowboys cling to the glory days like a man sporting a toupée who thinks it makes him look 35 again.
Since their Super Bowl win in 1995, the Cowboys have been to the playoffs 13 times and have not won more than one playoff game in a postseason. The last time they won a playoff game was in 2022, and a week later they collapsed against Jordan Love and the Green Bay Packers in the divisional round, suffering a 14-point fourth-quarter comeback from the Packers who won on a field goal in overtime.
It turns out the Cowboys have as many, if not more, lows than your garden-variety NFL franchise. There’s the Dez Bryant non-catch, Tony Romo fumbling a game-winning field goal snap (a moment I’ve watched as much as I’ve blinked), and many a beatdown at the hands of the Packers.
If you went back in time to young Jeremy when I first got into football and said, “The Philadelphia Eagles will win two Super Bowls before the Cowboys win their next one,” I’d first say, “How is my adult life and do I have money to buy all of the Pop-Tarts I want,” and then I’d call you crazy and go back to watching All That.
As an Eagles fan, I’m familiar with delusion. I just had delusion over for dinner last night. But Dallas and their fans act like 1995 was two weeks ago. After consulting my calendar, it appears that it was not.
1. Jerry Jones
Dallas resides in the shadow of the league’s most prominent owner. A man who is the final evolution of rich old white dudes. If rich old white dudes were Pokémon, Jerry Jones would be Articuno. A rare, icy, legendary bird wielding the unbridled power of being rich, old, and white. Jones is audaciously cartoonish in his villainy. He is the apex predator of the modern NFL athlete. A James Bond villain with an Arkansas twang who sees players as commodities, and drama as fodder towards brighter lights and access to news cycles.
His need for attention is insatiable and at times overshadows the needs of the team he stewards. Jones appears on a weekly radio show (which is not normal for owners to do at all), saying shit that directly contradicts the messaging from his coaching staff (like last week when he said new defensive coordinator Christian Parker would coach from the booth, which head coach Brian Schottenheimer later denied).
Since purchasing the Cowboys from H.R. Bum Bright in 1989 (a name I only mention because we don’t make names like this anymore), Jones chased Hall of Fame coaches Tom Landry and Jimmy Johnson out of town. The latter clashed with Jones because Big Jerry wanted credit for building the Cowboys’ ‘90s dynasty despite having little to do with the product on the field.
(Side note: I did research on Tom Landry wanting to hate him, but he’s kind of fascinating. Like, did you know he was a WWII Fighter Pilot before becoming Dallas’ first head coach and holding the position for 29 years? Also, this fit. If Nick Sirianni dressed like this, all would be forgiven.)
Jones notoriously delays rewarding contract extensions to his best players, a move that doesn’t abide by the team’s frugality or loyalty to the men who put their bodies on the line every Sunday. Not to mention, he’s been a lightning rod for controversies, including trying to get league commissioner Roger Goodell fired in 2017 after Cowboys running back Ezekiel Elliot was suspended for domestic violence, being caught in leaked photos with strippers, and a $2.4 million settlement to the Dallas Cowboys cheerleaders for truly gross locker room voyeurism allegations involving a Cowboys senior executive. Not great!
Aside from the ugly, when Jerry Jones fails, it happens spectacularly. His pride and joy is the $1.3 billion AT&T stadium affectionately nicknamed “Jerry World.” This concrete cathedral has a 600-ton megascreen as big as the old man’s ego. But the stadium is an encapsulation of a Cowboys franchise that leads with glitz and glamour despite lacking any substance. Take the $230 seat behind a concrete pillar, or this piece of metal that randomly fell from the roof during a Cowboys-Texans game, or how the stadium is built so that when the sun descends in the afternoon at certain times of year, it blinds the players on the field. During an Eagles game in 2024, CeeDee Lamb confessed at one point that he “couldn’t see the ball.” Travis Kelce summed it up nicely on his New Heights podcast, saying:
“That f---ing glare coming through that end zone in the afternoon is f---ing ridiculous…absolutely ridiculous. It’s like the glass makes it f---ing like spread more. It’s like the sun is bigger and brighter than it’s ever f---ing been.”
For the cherry on top, here’s a photo from 1957 where a young Jerry Jones was seen in the background of a photo of a protest where white students tried to deny six Black students entry to the newly desegregated North Little Rock High School. Make of this what you will.
So yeah, Dallas sucks!
This is some next level hate and I'm here for it.