The big game is this week - Packers v. Cowboys. It would be wrong of Cool Dadio to not weigh in. I lived in Dallas for 10 years. You can find the finer nuances as to why and how I lived in Dallas on Thirteenth Job of Bob - Part III. Or follow along on the whole Jobs of Bob category chronicle. None-the-less, when I got to Dallas in 1981, I was stunned to realize they collectively do not consider us rivals.
" What about the Ice Bowl in 1967?" I would tearfully plead. "And then the following season's playoff as well?" I would try one more ploy.
The Dallas people were like, "what ever, pardna!"
Dallas is rather a new entry into the National Football League having entered in 1960. Most of Green Bay's 12 championships happened before the Cowboy's even entered the league. But it is since the Super Bowl era that the many Dallas loyalists will point quietly to. Eight Super Bowl appearances. Five wins. They have more Super Bowl wins than Super Bowl appearances that the Packers have even played in. While the Packers languished in the 1970s, 1980s, and early 1990s, the Cowboys just kept going to the playoffs and chalking up National Conference Championship game appearances and wins.
We Packer people always chide our younger siblings in Dallas with the "Ice Bowl." "Da whud?" They usually collectively would say.
"Come on man, we are rivals," I used to say to anyone who would listen.
To a person, the response was always, "Dat soo?! By the way, are them Packers still in that little town up north there some where or have they been moved to the Carolinas?" I could only always just sigh. I was always outnumbered.
My father-in-law came to visit Dallas once in the 1980s. The Packers just happened to be in town. I ordered tickets for the game. The girl on the phone stopped me before I hung up and asked if I was interested in season tickets.
"This is a cruel joke, right?" I asked. "The Giants, Bears, and Packers require a 100 year waiting list for season tickets."
"People come and go in Dallas due to the oil and computer business - they are always giving up their tickets," she said rather apologetically. For 19 Dollars a ticket per game I owned four Dallas Cowboy season tickets for three years. That was about 30 home games. The seats were at the top of the stadium with the hole in its roof. Supposedly God watched his team through that hole. To me the rain, sleet, and intense heat whipped down where it hit me first as I sat yards from the hole. I watched Jerry Jones lose 15 games in his first season of Cowboy ownership after ousting Papa Tom Landry from the coaching helm and putting in friend Jimmy Johnson - the natives were restless. But still Green Bay was to the collective fans down there in Dallas like a traveling museum show coming to town. Packer tradition, history, whatever, "Now lets play the real villains in Washington, Philadelphia, and New York," the mantra usually ran.
This year, playoff home-field advantage is at stake. Dallas' quarterback grew up in Burlington, Wisconsin and was born 13 years after the Ice Bowl. There is karma brewing, yet the Packers roll into the city that killed Kennedy 44 years ago this month, as just another potential notch in their football belt. The Packers and the Cowboys may meet again on the road to the Super Bowl. The real rivalry might be enhanced if one of these two teams actually beats New England in the Super Bowl.
"We had to get through Dallas to do it."
"We had to get through Green Bay to do it."
Perhaps tomorrow I will post a column I had published in 1997 about the same pseudo / quasi rivalry - Packers v. Cowboys.
This week's Wisconsin soldier to remember is Staff Sergeant Todd Olson, 36, who died December 27, 2004, at the 67th Combat Support Hospital in Tikrit, Iraq. He had sustained wounds a day earlier from a roadside bomb detonated in Samarra, Iraq. Olson's home was in Loyal, Wisconsin. Todd was killed two weeks after his Wisconsin National Guard unit arrived in Iraq. He died on patrol when hit by the bomb in Samarra, a town north of Baghdad. The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel mentioned Olson had studied finance at the University of Wisconsin-La Crosse; he was married and the father of three teenage boys and a 5-year-old girl; he was a member of the Loyal School Board; a loan officer at the M&I Bank in Loyal and Neillsville; a youth group leader at Trinity Lutheran Church in Loyal; and a youth football coach. Staff Sergeant Olson joined the National Guard after he graduated from Loyal High School in 1986. He was attached to the Neillsville Unit Detachment 1, Company C, 1st Battalion, 128th Infantry Regiment, Wisconsin Army National Guard. They had been activated for training in Mississippi in June of 2004 and arrived in Kuwait in November. Staff Sergeant Olson was the 33rd soldier from Wisconsin to die in Iraq since spring 2003.
3,874 Americans have been killed in Iraq since Spring, 2003.
464 Americans have been killed in Afghanistan since October, 2001.
28,489 U.S. troops have been wounded in action in Iraq since Spring, 2003.
1,781 U.S. troops have been wounded in action in Afghanistan since October, 2001.
82 Wisconsin soldiers have been killed in Iraq since Spring, 2003.
6 Wisconsin soldiers have been killed in Afghanistan since October, 2001.
124 journalists (several nationalities) have been killed in Iraq since Spring, 2003.
14 journalists (various nationalities) have been killed in Afghanistan since October, 2001.
Soldier of the week, military casualty, and journalist casualty information sources: Committee to Protect Journalists; cnn.com; and, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.
