About two months ago, when my Beloved Dallas Cowboys started falling apart, I realized that I am far too emotionally invested in them. It’s a game, after all. But as much as I try to put things into perspective, I can’t seem to do it.
And after Sunday’s spectacular flame-out in Philadelphia I struggled to understand how a team could get rolled over like that and seem completely ambivalent about being so thoroughly embarrassed. This is the conclusion I’ve come to: The way they care about the game and the way fans care are gulfs apart.
I grew up cheering for the Cowboys. The pain of going 1-15 in 1989, though dulled by three Super Bowls in the 90s, stays with me. That memory, and a host of other disappointments collected over the years, is what us fans carry with us into each new season.
The difference is the players don’t see it that way. Odds are they didn’t grow up living and dying by how their team performed so those ghosts don’t follow them onto the field. Their points of view are completely different because they usually don’t have much historical perspective. Grow up in Michigan, go to college in California, get drafted by Arizona, get traded to Dallas. So while Sunday’s beating at the hands of a division rival was surely a disappointment, they can be coolly level-headed and logical about it.
Watch any playoff game this weekend and you will see that fans are neither logical nor level-headed.