Here We Go, Again
Life Lessons: Narrating VS Scripting
*this article is a bloodletting*
Where it Started
Cowboys fans of my age grew up on Myspace. My buddy Tom created a site for all the young dudes, full of ennui, to find music that spoke to them. Imagine a 14 year old me finding the song, “Time Won’t Let Me Go” by The Bravery. Little did I know that the lyrics would perfectly describe what it is like to a Cowboys fan; all the best days of my life, I think I saw them as Super Bowls on VHS.
Bleak? Myopic? Self-deprecation is a coping mechanism for football trauma.
The successes from 1992-1995 passed me by during my Barney-years. Far from my memory are all the stories of earlier Super Bowls. The Steelers and Packers battles were folk legends, equal to pages in a history book, the conquests of Napoleon and Alexander, good guys against the bad, the Allies against the Axis. Tom Landry was Eisenhower in a felt fedora, Staubach his Patton in the trenches. They are bronze statues of growing patina, not real people. I truly didn’t become a fan until I witnessed Tony Romo’s martyrdom.
As a response to ‘Cowboys suck’, the stats don’t lie despite the last thirty years:
the world’s most valuable franchise
the league’s most winning regular season franchise
top ten in the playoffs
five Super Bowls from eight appearances
ten with consecutive NFL Championship losses, 1966 and 1967
There are many categories where the Dallas Cowboys are exceptional.
I should be happier, but these are only lullabies that Cowboys fans sing, crying themselves to sleep.
The Script
Are the Dallas Cowboys now forever doomed to disgrace a rich history with the stains of modern failure? The melodrama sets its national tour each fall. Everyone tunes in to roast every single mistake and misstep. It is an easy-sell, a clickable topic; it is good content. Ask Stephen A. Smith, Skip Bayless, and Colin Cowherd to ignore a Cowboys story. Even if they wanted to, their producers wouldn’t let them.
God knows the world would be easier if these stories weren’t such a big deal. Imagine there not being a meddling owner. Pretend that there is no question whether the quarterback’s DNA tests show a clutch gene. Think of a world where a good defense doesn’t give up points that teams at the bottom of the league wouldn’t. Lastly, consider every free agent signing falling out of the rumor mill and on to the roster. Sounds like a much nicer world, doesn’t it? But, fans and foes alike expect the fall; we wouldn’t want to disappoint.
There is the meme of the entire league being scripted. Everyone knows what part the Cowboys play. Everyone knows their line.
“This is our year”
Against the Script: Narration
Why is having hope a fault? How is ambition an issue? Since when is belief a bad thing? If we bounce all the bad fans off of the bandwagon, there can be virtue in being a true fan. Because believing in the possibility of success is a good thing. Giving into a script gives away agency, and that is the only true luxury we have in this world. Nothing in the world is more valuable than being in control of how you lead your life.
The script tells us who are winners and losers, where each year is supposed to go. Still, every year there are surprises. The rebuild team that outperforms projections, the heavy favorites fail to meet expectations, or a player transcends their draft position (it is not important to cite an example here). Do these exceptions to the rules get lucky? Is there nothing more to it?
I am not against luck. Luck does take part. Success is sometimes a random confluence of disparate parts working in just enough harmony. Also, if we are continuing with using football franchises as a metaphor, sometimes success comes out sucking for a while to pay your dues.
If success wasn’t amorphous and random, then everyone would win the biggest prize every time, but they don’t. Even the most successful teams have been only 10-12 percent of the time, which makes the existence of dynasties even more impressive. The advent of free agency has only further complicated that possibility.
Trying to guess or plan for that sort of success is beyond me, and very rich people get large sums of money to fail at it every year.
“insert process-oriented over goal-oriented quote here*
Shoulder-chips don’t just show up, they are put there, self-installed. It isn’t by accident that number one draft picks, young coaches, and daring general managers go to bad teams, jimmies need a russlin’. New leadership brings new ideas and births what seems like instant success.
Jerry Jones has made the Dallas Cowboys a good business, not a great team: too big to fail, too efficient for real success. T-shirts and tickets get sold, but you save money on the championship parade. That’s where they get ya.
Leading yourself
As a fan, as a man, what is your response? How do you contend with a world that already put you in your lane? Asking someone to change their perspective feels foolhardy, but still we do it; I am still doing it here. Goddamn, a change needs to be made, and we think that it will be easy to turn back against the current, but no, it takes effort, and a planted flag is an anchor point.
The change of perspective from scripting to narration allows for a bad game to pass with a sad sigh, and then you move on. You take that into other aspects of your life. You roll with punches better. You recognize that a trophy isn’t the only determiner of success. Most importantly, if you ever do win big it is because of your actions were in alliance with your moral backbone, and not because it bent itself backward.
Narration is in lock-step with your actions. Think of it as bushwhacking over sign-following. It is a choose-your-own-adventure book. Flip to page 55 to decide to go back to night school. Flip ahead to 62 to drink a glass of water, 95 to touch grass, 101 to see the sunset flit through the trees in your neighborhood.
Life’s pages are in your hands, but you must do it with intent to progress the story. It is yours. Go and take it.
Takeaway
I have had enough fails, and just as many successes of my own to worry too much about how a billionaire manages millionaires. If I gave in to letting anything outside of me to rule my life, I would be homesick for a team I never knew, winning in someplace I would never be.
After all, it is just a game.