HOW 'BOUT THEM COWBOYS?

“Love ’em or hate ’em a lot, ambivalence is not on the menu”: a warts-and-all portrait of the storied football club that refuses to give in.

They’ve long been called “America’s team,” much to the chagrin of every other NFL franchise, and it seems fair to say that they’ve been reviled more than they’ve been loved, sometimes even in their hometown. New York Daily News NFL columnist Myers (My First Coach: Inspiring Stories of NFL Quarterbacks and Their Dads, 2017, etc.), who had the Cowboys beat for the Dallas Morning News for nearly four decades, has a more nuanced view of “Jerry’s World,” a franchise built on a huge gamble built in turn on a huge fortune—and one that has since turned into a vast marketing machine whose interests extend far beyond the gridiron. By the author’s account, it all hinges on Jerry Jones, who has never been afraid to make decisions that lost him a lot of fans, until, at least, those decisions turned out to be right, like canning longtime coaches and losing deadweight players. Jones has been as quick as Donald Trump to sue his fellow owners as well, making him persona non grata until, Myers writes, “he showed [them] the way to turn their franchises into ATM machines.” Though fond of sportswriting clichés and set pieces, the author sets up some nice battles, such as the one waged between Jones and coach Bill Parcells over “the mercurial and controversial wide receiver Terrell Owens," for whom Parcells had no use. It was one of the many clashes between Parcells and his boss, though, to hear Myers tell it, Parcells left after one flubbed play too many, with a Cowboys record that, to put it charitably, remains mixed.

Good reading to prep for the 2018 season, which many Cowboys-watchers are calling a make-or-break—though who gets made and who gets broken remains to be seen.