Winning a City's Heart

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I didn't grow up in Dallas, but my parents did, and we made about three or four trips to Dallas every year to visit my grandparents.

And I have lived here for the better part of the last 25 years so I feel I have a pretty good grasp of certain facts about this area.

Particularly sports allegiances.

And, even though I did not grow up here, there is one thing that I have always known about this area. I don't remember if anyone ever told me this. Maybe it's just been understood. Or implied.

Football reigns.

And, while it is hazardous to make generalizations about any state, I think that is true of Texas, not just the Dallas–Fort Worth Metroplex. It is the eternal truth of Texas. Football is king.

That is why an article by Drew Davison in today's Fort Worth Star–Telegram has been provoking discussions everywhere you turn — TV, radio, internet.

According to Davison, "The Texas Rangers are more popular than the Dallas Cowboys," a conclusion that is based on the fact that, in a survey of Dallas–Fort Worth area adults, more respondents said they had watched the Rangers play, either in person or on TV, or listened to a radio broadcast in the last year than had watched or listened to the Cowboys.

It's the first time the Rangers have outperformed the Cowboys in the survey, Davison wrote, and it made the DFW area one of a handful of places in the country where the baseball team is more popular — by that yardstick — than the football team.

I would argue that a couple of factors are at work here, and they both really relate to the same thing — Sports fans around here love winners.

Consequently, the survey shows fans gravitating to the team that is winning. The Rangers, long the doormats of the American League West, have been in the playoffs the last three years. In 2010 and 2011, they advanced to the World Series. They lost both, but they took the 2011 Series to seven games and were on the brink of winning it all a couple of times.

I have seen more people wearing Rangers apparel in the last few years. More folks wear Rangers caps in public. Attendance at home games has been stunningly high.

I've seen this at work here before. A few years ago, when the Dallas Mavericks won the NBA title, I noticed more Mavericks bumper stickers and window decals on cars and more people wearing Mavericks apparel. When the Dallas Stars won the Stanley Cup in 1999, there was a similar explosion in hockey's local popularity.

Call it the bandwagon effect, and, typically, it has been a fleeting thing. Within a couple of years of winning their championships, the Stars and Mavericks had reverted to their usual form, and their fan bases were back to the diehards.

I'm not entirely sure that will happen with the Rangers. But I'll get back to that.

Because of that affection for winners, I'm inclined to wonder if some of the respondents to the survey — frustrated by the Cowboys (22–26 with zero playoff appearances in the last three years and 2–7 in the postseason since their last trip to the Super Bowl in January 1996) — simply told the survey takers that they didn't pay attention to the Cowboys even if they did.

There's been plenty of local anger directed at Cowboys owner Jerry Jones since he bought the team 25 years ago and unceremoniously dumped iconic coach Tom Landry. Telling the pollster that they didn't pay attention to the team would be one way to get back at him, I suppose.

Most fans forgave him for firing Landry when Jones' choice to succeed Landry, Jimmy Johnson, won two Super Bowls, but then Jones' now–legendary ego apparently interfered, and he and Johnson came to a parting of the ways. He brought in Barry Switzer to lead the team for a few seasons, and Switzer did manage to win a Super Bowl with, essentially, the team Johnson had pieced together, but he couldn't co–exist with Jones, either.

The Dallas coaching job has been a revolving door ever since. Big–name players have signed high–dollar contracts, but there has been little to show for the investment.

It's frustrating for football fans. Can they be blamed for not wanting to be affiliated with this squad?

Even more frustrating is the fact that, in spite of the franchise's instability, the organization continues to raise ticket prices.

How sweet it would be for football fans if enough people refused to pay the ticket prices that the organization had no choice but to lower them. Unfortunately, however, enough people are willing to pay the price.

The Rangers were once an area joke. There have always been serious baseball fans around here, just as there are serious basketball fans and serious hockey fans, but they remained mostly silent until their local team began to win.

Things really started to turn around in the late 1980s when the Rangers signed veteran pitcher Nolan Ryan, who came here for the final five years of his Hall of Fame career. Now he runs the team, and he's built a solid winner that should be a contender on a regular basis.

Sure, there have been some complaints in the offseason about personnel developments for the Rangers, but, as Davison writes, "it's nothing compared to the vitriol thrown daily at the Cowboys." Even after losing star Josh Hamilton, the Rangers' popularity seems to be undiminished.

As Davison points out, the Rangers have raised their ticket prices, too, and it remains to be seen what kind of impact that will have on attendance. But I get the sense that, thanks to three consecutive playoff appearances, the Rangers will be harder to dislodge from the top of this local popularity poll than the Stars or Mavericks.

They don't seem to be a flash in the pan. That's good news for the Rangers and their followers.

And, although they probably don't think so, that's good news for the Cowboys, too. Because this area is so predisposed to love football, it's been as if the Cowboys have been given a pass since winning three Super Bowls in the 1990s.

But that reservoir of goodwill has been used up as far as many fans are concerned. It's time to put up or shut up.

The Cowboys now must work to regain the area's sports fans' allegiance. It won't be handed to them.

From time to time, one still hears talk about big–name coaches or big–name players who are being courted by the Cowboys. We've been through this all before many times, and I really thought the lesson had been learned.

Winning teams tend to have a certain chemistry, not a collection of resumes.

That's what wins a city's heart.

Peggy Fleming's Triumph

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I'm not precisely sure when my family got a television set for the first time.

But I'm pretty sure we had one 45 years ago this month.

I say that because I can remember my mother gathering my younger brother and me in front of the TV to watch Peggy Fleming skate in the 1968 Winter Olympics, which began in Grenoble, France, on Feb. 6. We were both very young at the time. I'm reasonably sure I had no idea who Peggy Fleming was — nor, for that matter, did I know what the Olympics were — and I am almost positive that my brother knew nothing about either as well.

But Mom definitely knew who Fleming was, and what I remember most of that occasion was Mom watching our tiny (by modern standards) black–and–white TV in rapt silence. Whenever I started to ask her anything, she would hold up one hand to quiet me, her eyes never leaving the screen.

I have fleeting memories of watching Fleming skate that night. I have since watched film of her performance, and each viewing serves to confirm what I remember. She was brilliant, and she, probably more than anyone, was responsible for the explosion in popularity of the Olympics in America.

Well, ABC's coverage of those Games — including extensive reports on Fleming and French skier Jean–Claude Killy — had a lot to do with it, too.

As far as American audiences were concerned, though, Fleming was the clear star. She was the only American to win a gold medal in the Grenoble Olympics.

Other American women achieved stardom as Olympic figure skaters in the years to come, but Fleming, while not the first, blazed the modern–day trail. It was Fleming who truly made it possible for Dorothy Hamill, Kristi Yamaguchi, Tara Lipinski and Sarah Hughes to claim Olympic gold.

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She overcame the loss of her coach in an airplane crash in Belgium almost exactly seven years earlier. That plane crash decimated the American skating program, and it must have been devastating for Fleming, who was 12 at the time. Nevertheless, Fleming rose to Olympic prominence from the ashes of that crash, in large part because of her unusual style.

Even though Christine Brennan writes in USA Today that there is no dominant American woman in figure skating today, it seems to me that modern American observers, being as provincial as they are, long ago grew accustomed to the idea that an American woman will be among the favorites at the Winter Olympics. It's taken for granted by some.

But that is a relatively recent phenomenon.

By 1968, only five American women had ever won medals for figure skating since the Winter Olympics began six decades earlier — and only two won gold. Four U.S. women have won gold since, and none of them really carried the national burden that Fleming did.

(Perhaps the 1980 U.S. hockey team did, but no single individual has — at least not in the Winter Games.)

When she ascended the podium to receive her gold medal, Fleming was joined by silver medalist Gabriele Seyfert of East Germany and bronze medalist Hana Mašková of Czechoslovakia. It was, as I say, the United States' only gold medal of the Winter Olympics.

That made her the darling of the Olympics as far as Americans were concerned.

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I didn't fully understand the significance of Fleming's triumph at the time. I was just too young.

But, as young as I was, I could see that it had a great impact on my mother. I always felt that Mom looked at Fleming as a role model, a symbol of what a woman could achieve.

Mom seldom spoke of it, but she always made a point of watching Fleming when she was on TV; sometimes I watched with her.

And sometimes she asked me if I remembered watching Fleming win her gold medal.

I always told her I did, but the truth was that my memory was spotty.

The truth also was that I clearly saw a lot of pride in Mom's eyes — and I heard a lot of pride in her voice — when she spoke of Fleming.

It made me realize how symbolic these triumphs were to young women in America.

Such symbolic victories, though, are accomplished through a lot of hard work and dedication. That was the thing I didn't appreciate at the time.

But I do appreciate it now.

The Imperfectionists

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Later today, the San Francisco 49ers and the Baltimore Ravens will meet in Super Bowl XLVII in New Orleans.

As you have no doubt heard, there are many dramatic storylines in this year's Super Bowl — the first time brothers will be coaching against one another, the final NFL game for Baltimore's Ray Lewis, etc.

And CSNCalifornia.com's Lee Siegel writes that, if they win today, the 49ers will be 6–0 in the Super Bowl, matching Michael Jordan and the Bulls in the NBA.

As dynasties go, I guess Jordan's Bulls have become the gold standard.

But the comparison of the Bulls and the 49ers is a bit of a stretch. Jordan really did participate in six championship–winning efforts in Chicago. The 49ers won their first four Super Bowls in truly Jordanesque style — behind the leadership of Joe Montana. But the fifth was won behind Montana's successor, Steve Young, and today's squad will be led by a fellow who was in elementary school the last time San Francisco hoisted the Lombardi Trophy. He hadn't been born when Montana won his first two Super Bowls.

And Siegel acknowledges that fact — albeit somewhat grudgingly — when he writes that, even though it will have taken three quarterbacks to accomplish it, a victory today still will be "yet another feather in the cap of this area and this franchise."

The game's final outcome will determine which storyline is the most relevant and the most intriguing, I suppose.

But today's Super Bowl will have to go some to match the drama of the Super Bowl that was played five years ago today.

On that day, the New England Patriots were the first team in 35 years to enter the Super Bowl with a perfect record — and, if they won the game, they would be only the second team to win every regular season and every postseason game — the first since the 1972 Miami Dolphins.

That alone probably rendered that game more dramatic than the one that will be played today.

But then the Giants, who were 12–point underdogs, snatched history away from the shocked Patriots, who had become the Dolphins (well, perhaps, more like the Steelers — or even the 49ers) of their generation with three Super Bowl appearances in the previous six years.

The Patriots had won all three of those Super Bowls, including a last–second triumph over the St. Louis Rams, widely regarded at the time as the NFL's greatest franchise.

Considering how Tom Brady and the Patriots had ruled the NFL in the first decade of the 21st century (not to mention the AFC's Eastern Division), it was logical to assume that an unbeaten New England team, with all that postseason experience on its roster, would crush the Giants, a mere wild–card entry.

Wild cards, of course, weren't part of the NFL's postseason landscape in the 1960s, but ever since 1970, there has been at least one in every playoff picture. In those 37 seasons, only eight wild cards had ever made it as far as the Super Bowl — only four had won it all.

It's safe to say that nearly everyone (with the noteworthy exception of Giants fans) assumed New England would win — and most probably assumed Brady would win his third Super Bowl MVP as well.

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Not only had wild cards rarely prevailed in the Super Bowl, but there had been relatively few Super Bowls that were truly competitive — at least in the first 30 or 35 years of its existence — regardless of whether a wild card played in them.

Football fans in the 21st century have grown accustomed to close scores in Super Bowls — thanks largely (but not exclusively) to the Patriots, who may have dominated their conference but won each of those three Super Bowls by three–point margins. Perhaps, in hindsight, that was something of a warning of what to expect.

For decades, the Super Bowl was frequently seen as a rather anticlimactic championship game in which one team dominated the other. There were some competitive games — but they were considered the exceptions to the rule.

The first decade of the 21st century produced more single–score margins than any decade since the Super Bowl era began yet, when the game began five years ago today, the two most recent Super Bowls had been won by more than a single score.

Those scores hadn't been nearly as lopsided as many Super Bowls that were played in the 20th century, but they were sufficient to make some people (especially football people, not just casual fans) wonder if the NFL was returning to a time when wide margins were the norm.

What happened on this day five years ago drove such thoughts far from observers' minds. What happened five years ago today was probably one of the most astonishing upsets in football history — more astonishing than when Broadway Joe led the Jets past the Colts in Super Bowl III.

I guess it took a team from Broadway to do it.

It was dramatic from the start. The Giants opened the game with the longest drive in Super Bowl history (including a record four third–down conversions). The drive consumed nearly 10 minutes, but the Giants ultimately had to settle for a field goal.

After taking a 3–0 lead in the first quarter, the Giants fell behind at halftime, 7–3. That was still the score when the fourth quarter began. It's safe to say that few who were watching that day, either at University of Phoenix Stadium or on TV, anticipated what happened in the fourth quarter.

There were three lead changes in that fourth quarter — first, Eli Manning led the Giants down the field for a touchdown, giving New York a 10–7 advantage. Then Brady retaliated with a touchdown pass to Randy Moss (who will participate in the Super Bowl later today), giving New England a 14–10 lead with less than three minutes to play.

But then came the kind of moment that can define a football player's professional career, for good or ill.

And, in the case of Eli Manning, it was for good. He drove the Giants more than 80 yards and threw the winning touchdown pass to Plaxico Burress with about 30 seconds to play.

But he might not have been in the position to throw that pass if he had not completed an improbable third down pass to David Tyree, who caught the first go–ahead TD pass earlier in the quarter.

In a catch that really defied description, Tyree outleaped the defender and made a one–handed grab in which the ball appeared to be stuck between his hand and his helmet.

The catch gained more than 30 yards for the Giants, who scored the go–ahead touchdown a few plays later. Manning, who completed 19 of 34 passes for 255 yards and two touchdowns, was named the game's MVP.

When Manning and the Giants beat the Patriots again four years later, he eclipsed his older brother Peyton, who, to date, has one Super Bowl title.

But even if Peyton matches his brother in Super Bowl victories, he will probably never match what his brother did five years ago today ... when Eli denied the Patriots their bid for perfection.