America's Whatever

 The NFL released its 2025 schedule the other day with the usual fanfare that didn't fit the moment, and once again we were subjected to the phenomenon of star power. Or Star power, as in "Those guys from Dallas with the Star on their helmets."

Yes, that's right, boys and girls. The patron saints of undeserved fanfare, your very own Dallas Cowboys, are going to get major push from the schedule crafters again.

The Pokes, a dreary 7-10 a year ago, nonetheless will get the second most primetime games -- six -- in the 2025 season. This is presumably because the NFL still regards them as America's Team, even though they've been America's Whatevers for some time now. Like, 30 years of time. That's the last time the Cowboys won, or even played in, a Super Bowl.

Thirty years! Heck, Bill Clinton, who's 78 now, was still in his first term as President. Monica Lewinsky was still a then-anonymous White House intern. She's 51 now.

And still the Cowboys haven't been back to the Super Bowl.

And still they're somehow enough of a draw, or at least perceived to be, that they regularly show up in primetime or in the national 4:35 p.m. Sunday game.

Know what, though?

The Star may finally be starting to fade.

In a piece by Richard Deitsch of The Athletic (via the website Awful Announcing), a Fox Sports suit named Michael Mulvihill confessed that network would have been fine with reducing the number of Cowboys games in the late afternoon Sunday slot. Fox, Mulvihill said, would have preferred more relevant NFC teams (the Eagles, the Lions, the Commanders with Jayden Daniels) instead. A few crossover AFC-NFC matchups involving, oh, say, Patrick Mahomes, Joe Burrow or Lamar Jackson would have been A-OK, too.

In other words; Let's get the stars out there, not just the Star.

This makes sense given the fact (or at least the perception) that America's Whatever has ceded its previous title to the Chiefs. We kinda know this because every time you turn around another Chief -- Mahomes, Taylor Swift's boyfriend Travis Kelce, even head coach Andy Reid -- is on our TVs hawking insurance or subs or breakfast cereal. At this point, in fact, it's fair to ask if there's anything Patrick isn't trying to sell us.

"Y'know, after a tough day knocking heads with Raiders or Broncos or Bengals, there's nothing I like better than easing into a warm, relaxing bath scented with delicate hints of lavender. Calgon, take me away!"

That sort of thing. 

At any rate, if even network execs are starting to question the Star's ratings glitter, you've got to wonder if there might be a turning of the worm at work. Roger Staubach, Emmitt Smith et al don't live here anymore, and haven't for a good space of years. And as much heft as history carries in the world of games, even history in the end becomes just that.

And a Cowboy becomes just a guy on a horse, gittin' those dogies along.