Sunday, January 4, 2015

Dallas Cowboys: My tribute to all the sports journalists of my youth ["Scattershooting"]



Scattershooting....... while wondering how the stagecoach ran through December so rapidly? 

As I sit here on this brisk January Sunday morning in tribute to Blackie Sherrod, Skip Bayless, Paul Crume, Dan Jenkins, Randy Galloway, and all others who pecked out their sports columns I read so religiously in my youth; I’m not writing in the Dallas Morning News, but I’m gonna drop a hot sports opinion nonetheless. 

Forty-days and forty-nights have passed since that terrible Thanksgiving Day when we all sat down for a feast of football. So decimated mentally and physically by the Eagles, the Cowboys rebounded and revived into a real contender for the Super Bowl everyone thought belonged to the home team, Arizona Cardinals.

Neither Matthew Stafford’s homecoming nor the feckless home-field advantage of Jerry’s Cowboys will dissuade me from prognosticating wild card success, this afternoon in Dallas. Finally, after wandering in the wilderness of mediocrity and the futility of .500, my precise predictive prowess tells my faithful readers that the Cowboys will win only its second playoff victory in 19 years. 

If kale is the new super-food, the Cowboys are the new Super Bowl contender! Their road may run through the frozen tundra, but a championship game in the wild Seattle northwest, with the despicable denizens a/k/a The 12th Man is not as daunting in light of the solid win over the Seahawks on October 12.



Am I a home-field hallucinator? A crazy Cowboy, delusional in Dallas? No, I think a dominating offense and an inspired, friendly crowd push the Pokes past the unlucky Lions. Defense is the unanswered question for those who wade into the scary waters of calling a Cowboy victory today; and if Dallas tries to single-cover Calvin Johnson again, Stafford will make the home squad pay as if he was Bobby Layne’s ghost. Ball control will win the day: Murray running-game plus zero takeaways by the Lions, equals another chance at greatness for the Metroplex’s most storied franchise. 

If Jerry-world resembles Disney-land more than Lambeau, the smash-mouth reality of the road to Glendale could mean a better path for the Cowboys, after this game; considering they’re the best road team in football? Like a great book, the story of this season changed drastically after November 27, and it must take another surreal turn this afternoon.


So if Super Bowl XLIX (whatever that number really means) in four weeks, pits Dallas versus Denver, like the big game 35-years ago at the Superdome; I’ll be the smartest man in journalism, and if I’m Arizona dreamin’ on this winter’s day, you’ll forget me like yesterday’s headlines. And so it goes…


©2015 – Mark H. Pillsbury (Fair use of copyrighted work shown herein is not an infringement of copyright law, 17 USC 107)

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