Dallas may have anointed itself ‘America’s Team’ back in 1978, but the Cowboys haven’t lived up to that moniker. The New York Giants have.
Any realistic fan base knows you can’t win a championship every year. But to win a title once a decade is expected, especially if you’re supposed to be one of the NFL’s elite franchises.
While the Cowboys had great success in the 1970s and 1990s, the Giants are the only NFL team that has won at least one Super Bowl in each of the past four decades. In fact, it’s been more than 20 years since Dallas even played in an NFC Championship Game (1996).
A team being mostly irrelevant for two decades isn’t what being ‘America’s Team’ is all about.
In the NFL you want your coaches to be great leaders of men. Dallas has had a few, including Tom Landry and Bill Parcells. Both Hall of Fame coaches got their start with what iconic franchise? The New York Football Giants.
You could say that the Giants, who helped develop Landry as a coach, were partly responsible for the five Super Bowls Dallas played in from 1950-1959, a run that included two championships.
Sure, Parcells failed to match Landry’s on-field success in Dallas, but his celebrity and personality kept the Cowboys relevant during a time when the franchise was dysfunctional.
When you want to market your brand to a new viewing audience, you’re going to pick your most marketable and popular teams to do so. So when the NFL decided to begin its International Series in 2007, which team did they select for the inaugural game?
It was the Giants, who beat Miami 13-10 at London’s iconic Wembley Stadium in October 2007. Meanwhile, Dallas had to wait eight years for their chance, beating Jacksonville 31-14 in November 2014.
If the Cowboys were really ‘America’s Team,’ they’d have been the first team to play overseas.
Cowboys fans will try and rebuke these facts by saying that Dallas has five Super Bowl titles while the Giants only have four. That’s true. But the Giants won four NFL Championships in the pre-Super Bowl Era. Technically, Big Blue holds an 8-5 lead in titles.
So as we celebrate the Fourth of July holiday, let this be the day that we acknowledge the truth: That the New York Giants are the real America’s Team. After all it’s the Giants that wear red, white and blue.