So
I say to Floyd, I say, “Floyd, my boy.” Floyd, in case you don’t know, is a
large dog. I say, “Son, I’ve been in every so-called arm-pit in this country.
I’ve been to Lincoln, Nebraska… Marquette, Michigan …and Detroit. I’ve been
to Norman, Oklahoma… hell, I’ve been all through Oklahoma. I’ve even been to
College Station… twice.” Floyd and I are in the middle of a long road trip back from Colorado. He’s
sound asleep in a tiny space created in the back of the Saab. “Goddammit, boy!
I’m talking to you!” I tickle his paw and pinch his sagging jowls. I must
be heard. A red, bleary eye rolls open. With his undivided attention, I
continue, “I’ve driven through the Badlands of New Mexico and South Dakota, but
right now…” I shook the poor animal’s head to keep him from missing the
culmination of my extemporaneous oration, “we’re smack in the middle of the
ugliest spot in North America.”
If you stood on a dot about 20 miles east of Odessa, Texas and tied a string
to your belly button extending out 100 miles in every direction, you would be,
truly, in the very epicenter, the dark vortex, of the most godforsaken spot on
the continent. The dry, parched land is red and strewn with rocks, vomited up
from the deepest depths of hell. The topography has the occasional, for lack of
a better word, “hill” except hill makes the red pimples on the earth sound far
more glamorous than they are. The only living growth on this obscene landscape,
a mangled, deformed, nasty looking thing, partway between a tree and a shrub,
is what I’ll call a “trub.” The grubby little oil wells, the only indication of
human habitation, seem specially designed to fit into the filthy, unearthly
surroundings. Not the dramatic, majestic oil wells James Dean built in
Giant, but stumpy, dirty things, looking remarkably like mechanical
trubs. In a sci-fi movie, this is a place serviced by robots, an area of the
earth to avoid at all cost. But if, as in the case of a man and his dog, a
pilgrimage must take you into this netherworld, it’s a place to move through
with all due alacrity.
The sports year has
three periods of barren nowhereland — how’s that for a smooth setup? — during
the course of the year and it’s always in those in-between times, as one sport
winds down and others are just starting. There’s the desolate period following
the Super Bowl. It’s winter, or what passes for winter, with dreary days and
cold nights, too early for basketball, no football. Serious depression looms
behind the dark, uncaring television screen. Next, the weeks following the NBA
playoffs. Though essentially endless, spanning two seasonal changes, the
playoffs are insidiously addicting. Before you can say, “Shaq’s at the line,
shooting two,” it’s summer. Disturbingly, I think often of Hubie Brown.
August is the third. Football is somewhere on the heated, wavy horizon. Time
stands still. August never ends. There’s pre-season NFL “games,” but even I
have limits. I guess baseball once bridged this gap, but no longer. Maybe it’s
because live games are too much trouble to attend. Maybe it’s the strike. Maybe
too many broken hearts. I don’t know. The game doesn’t bring much joy. Like
Sudafed for a brain hemorrhage, as an elixir, baseball just doesn’t cut it.
Next week begins the annual, two-week journey through the NFL, as I assess
teams in my honored, prejudiced, arbitrary way.
Some early comments on the Cowboys: Dallas, a team, in case you’re reading
here for the first time, I’ve detested since I was a wee zygote, despite all
the defections, distractions, and natural attrition of three Super Bowl years,
has three pieces no other team can claim: Aikman, Smith, and Irvin. Yes, there
are teams who possess fine quarterbacks — many teams have fine running backs.
A few, very few, boast receivers as talented as Irvin. None have them
all. Most “contenders” don’t have two of the three. So the Cowboy defense is,
at best, average and getting worse, with the cornerback and lineman positions
so depleted they’d give you a look. So the All-Pro tight end looks like his
career might be over. Dallas has the best QB, the best running back, and the
best wide receiver, not to mention pass blocking and, creating gaping holes
beer salesmen could run through, the two best tackles.
More than I want good air conditioning, I want — I need! — someone to beat
Dallas. But who’s gonna do it? Old reliable rivals the 49ers have done nothing
to improve themselves. Young and Rice are another year older. They have no pass
rush, corners or running backs. Green Bay? It seems like they play Dallas three
times a year. Have the Packers ever won? Brett Farve is being canonized, on the
basis of lots of potential, one fine season and a winter in detox.
Characteristic media overhype. They don’t have anything close to Smith and
Irvin, linebackers either.
So tell me, who’s better than the Cowboys? Someone in the AFC? Oh, I see, a
little joke. As long as two of those three are playing, the Cowboys, until
proven different, are still (and this speaks volumes to the ravages of
expansion and free agency) the best team in football. n
This article appears in August 16 • 1996 and August 16 • 1996 (Cover).