Dallas' Team, Cowboys vs. Houston Texans 2.0? Building a Champion?

WHITT’S END: 4.5.24

Whether you’re at the end of your coffee, your day, your week or even your rope, welcome to Whitt’s End …

*Since the Dallas Cowboys can’t win a Super Bowl, maybe they should just “buy” one?

That’s the waste-of-breath idea from cuckoo Dallas mayor Eric Johnson, the unstable leader who changed political parties during his term, who was in Switzerland for a World Economic Forum during his city’s recent critical $1.1 billion bond allocation meetings, and who now thinks his fair burg should be the new (old) home of the two-time defending Super Bowl champion Kansas City Chiefs.

This week Missouri voters struck down a sales tax that would have funded major renovations to the Chiefs’ Arrowhead Stadium. The Chiefs, who had committed $300 million in private money to the upgrades, were hoping to use public funding to help support the $800 million project.

Chiefs CEO Clark Hunt says the team must now look at other options. The lease with Arrowhead runs through 2031.

Johnson attempted to capitalize on the Missouri vote by recruiting the Chiefs back to Dallas with a social media post that read “Welcome home, Dallas Texans!”.

“Our market is big enough, growing enough, and loves football more than enough to support a second NFL team,” Johnson said. “Especially a franchise (and an owner) with deep roots here.”

File this one under “over my dead body”, as Jerry Jones obviously would fight to keep his football monopoly in North Texas.

Said Jerry in 2022: “You can be rest assured that you would not have the NFL supporting another team because of the kind of value that the game and the NFL receives of having the Dallas Cowboys as one of its marquee teams and again, logic tells you the NFL wouldn’t want to water that down.”

The Cowboys so dominate DFW that most fans don’t even realize the Chiefs did indeed begin in Dallas.

Before Dak Prescott and Tony Romo and Troy Aikman and Roger Staubach and even Don Meredith, Len Dawson was the first star quarterback in Dallas professional football history.

In 1960 pro football arrived in DFW, in the form of the NFL's Cowboys and the AFL's Dallas Texans. The Texans' owner - Lamar Hunt - was keen on hiring for his head coach a defensive whiz in New York. Alas, Tom Landry took a job with the Cowboys and Hunt settled on future Hall of Famer Hank Stram.

While the Cowboys floundered in their first three seasons, by 1962 the Texans were winning their league's championship. With their training camp at SMU and sharing a home stadium with the Cowboys in the Cotton Bowl, the Texans got a boost from the arrival of Dawson.

Cut by the Pittsburgh Steelers and Cleveland Browns, Dawson joined the Texans and became the AFL's MVP after leading the league in passing touchdowns with 29. In 1962 Meredith, the Cowboys' first star quarterback, was still splitting time with Eddie LeBaron.

Tired of sharing the spotlight with the Cowboys and sensing an available market to the north, Hunt moved the Texans to Kansas City in 1963 and re-named them the Chiefs. Dawson was the centerpiece of Kansas City's early success, leading them to three AFL Championships. And after the NFL-AFL merger in 1966, he led the Chiefs to a 23-7 win over the Minnesota Vikings in Super Bowl IV.

The Chiefs have seven years to figure out a new home. Maybe they revise their sales tax proposal. Maybe they move to the Kansas side of Kansas City. They will not – sorry Mayor Bozo – return to Dallas.

*Big buzz in sports this week is the viral trend of women’s college basketball. Y-a-w-n.

I suggest a little history lesson for these fawning, prisoner-of-the-moment TV analysts and fans who suddenly think Caitlin Clark is redefining the sport. Google: Sheryl Swoopes.

From Brownfield, Texas, Swoopes remains the closest female facsimile of Michael Jordan. In 1993 she led Texas Tech to the national championship, scoring a still-record 47 points in the title game. She made athletic dribble drives to the basket. She scored on actual jump-shots, with both feet off the ground. Unlike Clark’s bread-and-butter, she didn’t produce a single point from a “step-back 3” because back then the move was known as traveling.

Swoopes possessed us to watch because she had moves no other woman showed, before or since. Clark, granted, had shooting range out to 30 feet but …

“Will Caitlin Clark be a good pro? Absolutely,” Swoopes said recently. “Will Caitlin Clark come into the WNBA and do what she’s doing right now immediately? Absolutely not. Not gonna happen.”

Swoopes, on the other hand, also dominated at the next level.

She was the first player signed by the WNBA. She was a three-time MVP. She won three Olympic gold medals. She’s a member of the Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame.

Swoopes was Clark – only better – 30 years before the current darling. For those yammering about Clark being the GOAT of college basketball: Stop the cheerleading and mix in a little studying.

*Rid of the fake-tough-guy known as Grant Williams, the Dallas Mavericks are now built to win a couple series in the upcoming NBA Playoffs. Since they jettisoned Williams and acquired P.J. Washington and Daniel Gafford at the trade deadline, they are 17-7 and headed for a 50-win season. Get rookie center Dereck Lively II back healthy and the Mavs will be the team no one wants to face in a seven-game series.

*It’s almost as delicious that the Houston Astros are 2-5 that the Texas Rangers are 5-2.

*Bluebonnets look purple. HEB grocery stores are named after Howard Edward Butt. If you insist that life begins at conception then you must also acknowledge that all men are transgender. And also from the department of things-are-weird-but-true, on Monday in Dallas the Moon will be exactly the same size as the Sun. As a space geek, I’m amped for the total solar eclipse. No thank you, clouds. Simple explanation of how a total eclipse is possible: The Sun is 400 times bigger than the Moon, but also 400 times farther from the Earth. Enjoy!

*Cowboys have drafted a player 24th overall four times. No pressure, but Calvin Hill, Robert Jones, Dez Bryant and Tyler Smith is a pretty high bar.

*Hot.

*Not.

*So the Cowboys will play 2024 with both a “lame duck” at coach (Mike McCarthy) and quarterback (Dak Prescott). But not to worry, they might replace future Hall-of-Fame left tackle Tyron Smith with disappointing career backup Chuma Edoga. Everything’s fine. Nothing to see here.

*Only thing better than White Rock Lake on a perfect Spring afternoon is a 5k around White Rock Lake on a perfect Spring afternoon.

*Speaking of sporty women, my list of the best female athletes in DFW includes: Olympic gymnasts Carly Patterson and Nastia Liukin, basketball star Tamika Catchings, Olympic shot-put champion Michelle Carter and Olympic sprinter Sha’Carri Richardson. Honorable mention to Linda Carter, former high school hoopster who helped husband, Don, launch the Mavericks in Dallas. Dishonorable mention to Laura Miller, the former Dallas mayor who shooed away both the Rangers and Cowboys to Arlington. But the most influential woman in local sports history is hoops legend Nancy Lieberman. When you’re done learning about Swoopes dig into Lieberman, whose worst assist is better than Clark’s best.

*Right place. Horribly wrong time. One minute you’re working out at a swanky health club in Highland Park, next minute you’re riding on the hood of a Porsche SUV.

*Give me “Retirement Rondo,” just so Mavs fans no longer have to endure the fallacy of “Playoff Rondo.”

*I’m a little freaked out by Artificial Intelligence. Mostly because I love the

1999 movie, The Matrix, in which “Morpheus” warns “Neo”: “In the early 21st Century all of mankind marveled at our own magnificence as we gave birth to AI.” Neo: “Artificial Intelligence?” Morpheus: “Yes, a singular consciousness that spawned an entire race of machines. We don’t know who struck first … us or them.” Look, frauds such as Milli Vanilli, augmented breasts and Skip Bayless have been around for a while. But I feel like we’re as naively stumbling around AI in 2024 as we were around the invention of something called the internet in 1994. Elon Musk admits there is a “20 percent” chance of AI destroying mankind, but says it’s nonetheless worth pursuing. What the what?!

In recent weeks I saw an interview with a tech geek who says “AI will have more of a profound impact on our society than fire and electricity.” I just fear that, as in The Matrix, we birth our assistants but ultimately become the assistants who become unnecessary. Also, this happened: AI was asked if it could solve world hunger. “Yes.” Cool. How? “Eliminate one billion human beings. There will be plentiful food for everyone.” I rest my case.

*Rangers’ World Series odds are +10,000. A year ago at this time they were +150,000. So they’re … one zero better?

*Our world in a nutshell: Costco sells $1.50 hot dogs, two aisles down from where it is now selling $179 prescriptions for Ozempic.

*While on vacation I missed the 30-year anniversary of the Jerry-Jimmy breakup. Still the most surreal “event” I’ve ever covered. Feels like 300 years ago.

*Last thing on women’s sports: Tennis matches are only best of three sets … softball dimensions are smaller than baseball … there are ladies’ tees on golf courses … Sports are regularly customized for female athletes. Why not shrink the court and lower the goal in basketball? The women’s tournament and the WNBA obviously have skilled players, but none of the action happens above the rim and most of it occurs just inches off the court. Also, if you demand the spotlight you better develop thick skin. LSU coach Kim Mulkey this week whined for an apology about a terse newspaper column that called her players “dirty debutantes.” You think Lou Holtz or Jimmy Johnson did the same when their classic 1988 Notre Dame-Miami football showdown was dubbed “Catholics vs. Convicts”?

*Something you didn’t hear a lot about during last week’s “He is Risen!” Easter hubbub: According to Christianity, Jesus came to Earth about 2,000 years ago to spread the gospel and provide a map to Heaven. But, um, humans have roamed this planet for – by the most conservative estimates – 100,000 years. So the millions of folks unlucky enough to be born, lived and died in the 98,000 years before Jesus’ visit are just eternally – naively – burning in Hell? Doesn’t exactly seem fair.

*The Rangers’ run to last year’s World Series obviously gripped DFW, but … all five games against Diamondbacks last October had a smaller TV audience than this week’s Iowa-LSU women’s basketball game.

*This Weekend? Friday let’s patio. Saturday let’s tennis. Sunday’s let’s drive to visit the parents in JoCo. As always, don’t be a stranger.