Mark Kriegel Explains Why We Play Football Games Instead of Simulate Them

http://msn.foxsports.com/nfl/story/8394768/Wait-till-December-to-believe-in-the-

First off, I have a problem with the title of this column. Wait until December to believe in the Cowboys? The playoffs don't start until January. He spends this entire column warning us against handing them a place in the Super Bowl as the NFC representative, then says wait until the end of the regular season to crown them but they still have to make it all the way through the playoffs? Not good.

Second, if anyone can look at the picture of Tony Romo throwing the ball and look at his face and say he does not look like he is retarded, then you are lying.

Here in a town best known for producing strawberries, lima beans and gangbangers, the Dallas Cowboys are endeavoring to transform training camp into a theme park.

You mean the Cowboys franchise is better at marketing the franchise than actually winning football games? I don't believe it. You don't hear any stories of Cowboy players from the 70's-90's and their off the field activities, so I would never believe they would treat training camp as a side show. I hate the Cowboys, I will reveal this now. If you don't hate the Cowboys, then you hate America. They have not won a playoff game since 1996 and every single one of their fans is a bandwagon fan or a redneck. There I said it.

The makeshift complex boasts enough corporate sponsorships to qualify as a NASCAR site. Cowboys merchandise seems a mandatory purchase for the fans who throng the practice field. They chant and cheer for the quarterback and their new corner.

No other team does this. Little known fact, but in Indianapolis the pensive fans boo and throw glass bottles at Peyton Manning every year and slash the tires on Bob Sanders' car. One year in San Francisco, the fans who showed up for mini camp kidnapped Joe Montana's daughter while she was at day care, until Joe could prove he knew how to throw a complete pass. Ronnie Lott actually lost his little finger when it was bitten off by an angry female fan who showed up at mini camp to specifically attack him.

It's good to be a Cowboy.

Maybe too good.

Read that first sentence. Now read the second sentence with a quizzical look on your face as if something is awry like the Cowboys are actually robots or the fans are clones. Is it possible a team could have such a good time. It is...not...possible, what has Mark Kriegel discovered?

But their popularity is unwarranted when considered in relation to the last decade. For all the talk of a Cowboys renaissance — you've heard it since 2003 when Bill Parcells signed on as coach — this team still hasn't won a playoff game since 1996.

I 110% agree with this statement. Unfortunately it leads to this question for Mark Kriegel. That question is this. Do you think the reason they are so popular may have something to do with sportswriters who write columns about them? Do you think, like I do, it is stupid for you to write an entire article specifically about a team, their Super Bowl chances, and their cast of characters that also happen to be good football players, and then complain you don't know why they are popular? The Dallas Cowboys are famous because they are not a football team, they are traditionally a cast of characters that can also play football. You already know this don't you though Mark.

Maybe you know it too well.

I asked coach Wade Phillips what could be learned from the disappointing way last year's team finished, or rather, did not.

Try not to let your QB and TE go on a vacation the week before the game, the playoffs are often unpredictable, they lost to the eventual Super Bowl champion who defeated an undefeated team which also happens to be the same undefeated team that defeated the Cowboys at home during the season, or the team may not have been as talented as they got credit for?

All of those are acceptable answers. Wade?

"Besides I can't coach very good?"

He don't speak good either.
"Last year was last year and it's over with."
Wade Phillips new philosophy! "Those who don't learn from the past are smart because there is really no reason to learn anything from mistakes you made."
This is what makes Wade the mediocre coach he is.
But he was more intent on emphasizing that the inevitable turnover on a roster meant that this year's team was not last year's.
"We'll have a new team," he said.
I know anytime a team has massive roster turnover, that does nothing but bode well for their immediate ability to win football games. I am kidding of course. I think it is great Wade Phillips thinks that the #1 team in the NFC should have roster turnover because they lost a one game playoff. They should have won the game, and Tony Romo is still a choking piece of shit, but I don't know if going back to the drawing board is what should have been done.
The funny part is that they do not have a new team. Maybe some new players but not quite an entire new team. Do you think Wade Phillips can even name 10 people on the roster currently? Me neither.
What's more, his job depends on an entirely different outcome, something in line with what the Cowboys are, which is to say the most talented team in the conference.
I like how Mark writes an entire column about how the Cowboys need to prove themselves until December and you should not believe in them right now because no games have been played, and then he feels the need to call them the most talented team in the conference. Based on the paper roster and the talent contained within, which he says you should avoid judging the team by. It is a clusterfuck of a point.
"The Giants made 52 yards in the second half," owner Jerry Jones said, "and we still didn't finish it."
This was all Wade Phillips' fault. It had nothing to do with your Sling Blade Quarterback who can't seem to win a playoff game at home.
"If you change four, six, seven plays it's a different game," said the tight end, Jason Witten.
If you change 4-7 plays in every single game that has ever existed in every single sport that has ever existed, then it would be a different game. Except the 2004 Red Sox because any game they played in was destiny. This could perhaps be the worst point ever made in the history of football players, or any sports athlete as the case may be. In a game where there may be 100 overall plays, to change 5% of them that did not go your way would dramatically change the outcome of the game. I know he went to Tennessee but this is still not that hard to figure out.

Leonard Davis, the veteran guard, spoke of not playing "like you already got it made into the playoffs."

Was that the problem, I asked, playing like you already had it made?

"It could have been," he said. "I don't know. I didn't take a survey."
Ladies and gentlemen, I now present to you, the single least informative conversation ever recorded.

"We can't let this man jump off the building because his belt is armed with nuclear explosives!"

"Is that what he is wearing around his waist? I can't see."

"I have no idea. I have not looked up at him yet, it could just be a belt."

Someone should have reminded them that the plaudits were premature, and the team itself, immature.

Boom! The man who just said you were the most talented team in the NFC said you may not be the best team in the NFC, so don't even think about calling yourself that, and called you a little baby. I am sure the maturity level of the team has increased with Pacman Jones on the roster. So no problems there.

Jones told me after practice. "You gotta finish everything. Finish every drill. Finish every practice hard. The place to start is right here." Still, the Cowboys should know: either they finish the season or they finish their coach.

This sounds like a very dramatic way to end the column. It also sounds like Kriegel is going to kill Wade Phillips if the Cowboys do not win the Super Bowl. You be the judge though.