<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE </div><div class='quotemain'>Anthony Wright remembers his Dallas Cowboys pajamas. He was 6 or 7, living in Vanceboro, N.C., and rooting for the organization known as America’s Team, sometimes to the tooth-gnashing fury of those who did not fall under the spell.</p> Having since played quarterback for the Cowboys, admittedly living out a childhood fantasy, Wright, 31, is a backup for the Giants, who take on Dallas today in a battle for first place, just like in the old days.</p> Love them or hate them, the Cowboys still lead all N.F.L. teams in ratings on every network that carries them, as well as in logo-driven merchandise, including pajamas like those Wright wore as a tyke. It takes a grown-up — and Wright is one — to admit crying as a little boy when the Cowboys would lose to one of their rivals.</p> In the early 1980s, most people in North Carolina rooted for Washington, the closest team in the league, but Wright chose the Cowboys.</p> •</p> “Maybe it was the star,” he said with a smile, referring to the symbol of the Cowboys. (The five-pointed star was also the symbol of the Soviet Union, rising above the Kremlin, for what that is worth.)</p> The Cowboys have been known as America’s Team since 1978, when a film producer, Bob Ryan, gave them that title for the annual documentary by Steve Sabol, one of the founders of NFL Films. Coach Tom Landry hated the pressure that went along with that nickname, but the national fan base and the futuristic, grimly cold silver-and-blue uniform motif sold Cowboys gear, and still does, while infuriating fans of other teams.</p> The Cowboys, with their edge of Southern pride, bring out the zealot in their fans. Recently, I wrote a casual remark about not quite understanding why people went along with the Cowboys as America’s Team. I got nasty e-mail messages, some of them telling me that if I didn’t love the Cowboys, I didn’t love America, and should leave the country as soon as possible. I think they were serious, too.</p> That attitude doesn’t come from nowhere. The Cowboys were recently rated as being worth $1.5 billion and the most valuable sports franchise in the world, according to Forbes. Their new stadium is scheduled to open in 2009 and hold Super Bowl XLV in 2011. The Cowboys’ owner, Jerry Jones, has made forays into independent marketing, and even seems to have his personal foreign policy.</p> Recently, Jones praised the Dolphins and the Giants for their good-will gesture of playing an official game in London, but Jones emphasized that the Cowboys have their loyal fan base and do not intend to play any league games outside the good old U.S. of A. In fairness, the Cowboys have frequently made concessions to television, playing games on Thanksgiving or on Sunday or Monday nights, disrupting the routines that coaches crave.</p> Even in a nation as large and regional as the United States, the Cowboys seem to have the same role the Yankees do in baseball and Notre Dame used to have in college football. More compact nations tend to produce national teams that are generally accepted as dominators — in baseball, the Yomiuri Giants of Tokyo; and in soccer, Juventus of Turin, Italy.</p> The Cowboys seem to attract converts, like Eugene Aiello, a retired high-school principal from Long Island, who was a Giants fan until his son, Greg, went to work for the Cowboys. When his son moved back to New York to work for the N.F.L. — he is senior vice president for public relations — the father remained in Texas, watching every Cowboys game on television and marking W or L on the schedule, until his death on Oct. 21 at age 90. A man born in Little Italy in Manhattan died as a rooter for America’s Team.</p> •</p> Then there is Michael Mooney, 55, the financial director for Standard & Poor’s in New York, who grew up in Westchester County, Giants country for sure, but became a Cowboys fan as a youngster to annoy an obnoxious Green Bay Packers fan in his neighborhood.</p> Mooney catches the Cowboys whenever they come east, and every year he makes a hegira to Texas with his wife, Joyce, and their son, Michael, now 20, for their annual Christmas card photograph in some hallowed corner of the Cowboys’ stadium. Very much a New Yorker and Yankees fan, Mooney says he daydreams of leaving Giants Stadium around 7 tonight, “along with 10,000 other Cowboys fans watching 65,000 drunken Giants fans moping out of there.” Otherwise, he will be in conference all day tomorrow, and not reachable by phone.</p> Few childhood Cowboys fans ever have the thrill of playing for the team, but Anthony Wright did, starting five games and playing in three others for the injured Troy Aikman in 2000 and 2001, observing the America’s Team phenomenon up close.</p> “You never saw it as an advantage because you still had to play the game,” Wright said, referring to the reputation as America’s Team.</p> “Once it’s written, it’s a fact,” said the quarterback who once was a little boy in North Carolina, wearing Cowboys pajamas.</div></p> Source: NY Times</p>
Brett Favre is America's Quarterback, but I don't know about the Packer's being the team </p> I also had cowboys PJ's when I was younger. The staple of a growing fan.</p>
