It's still fun to hate America's Team

The glory years with the Plastic Man.

As a young man growing up in the territory of the Washington Redskins, I had a fanatical father who worshiped the Skins and imbued that mania into his impressionable oldest son---me. One of the basic tenents of this tribal religion was to develop a deep seated hatred of the cocky, computerized Dallas Cowboys and their haughty distant coach who was nicknamed "the Plastic Man" by former Dallas running back Duane Thomas, who later became a Redskin.

In stark contrast to the scrappy lunch pail type of football played by the Redskins of my youth, the Cowboys represented cold calculated statistically derived spread sheets and their silly sounding Doomsday Defense. Roger Staubach was a handsome quarterback hero out of the Naval Academy while our quarterbacks Billy Kilmer and Sonny Jurgenson were pot-bellied drunks with way more DUI's than Super Bowl trophies. The match-up was always a big affair in both Texas Stadium and RFK, with the intensity of partisan feeling among the home crowds approaching a religious fervor.

The NFL no longer has that same level of heated intensity but I think that many people around the country still probably dislike the Cowboys more than any other team excepting maybe the Yankees and Lakers. These are teams that we love to hate.

I can't say that I'm happy that they defeated the Eagles by the skin of their teeth this fine Monday evening in November.