Eight Feet Deep

Around these parts — mean­ing just about all of Texas except maybe El Paso — when some­one talks about “the game” they mean the Dallas-Minnesota matchup come high noon (Cen­tral time) Sun­day. I say most of Texas except El Paso because I know it is home to many San Diego fans since El Paso is almost as close in dis­tance to San Diego as it is Dal­las and may well be much more near culturally.

I sus­pect the “the game” ref­er­ence prob­a­bly holds true in the Twin Cities  where the folks have more rea­son than most cities to hold a grudge against Texas. There was a lit­tle play that became known as the “Hail Mary Pass” in 1975 in which Cow­boys quar­ter­back Roger Staubach hit wide receiver Drew Pear­son on a 50-yard des­per­a­tion pass. Pear­son caught it and backed into the end zone for the game-winning touch­down. Vikings play­ers and fans protested then and now that Pear­son was guilty of offen­sive pass inter­fer­ence on cor­ner­back Nate Wright who fell to the ground dur­ing the recep­tion. The TD knocked the Vikings out of the playoffs.

As an aside, some nas­ti­ness ensued after the play includ­ing a ref get­ting struck on the head by a whiskey bot­tle thrown from the stands. The assault knocked the zebra out with his wound requir­ing 11 stitches.

Gerry Fra­ley of The Dal­las Morn­ing News points out a laun­dry list of other rea­sons why Texas is the source of some under­stand­able ani­mus in the Twin Cities. This includes Dal­las steal­ing the NHL team, the lop­sided trade to Dal­las for Her­schel Walker and for­mer Vikings owner and Texan Red McCombs threat­en­ing to move the team unless he got a new sta­dium. All in all it sounds more like a plot to an old “Mav­er­ick” episode than sports.

Despite the ani­mos­ity and the fact its the Cow­boys the Vikings that are up against each other in the NFL Wild Card match, the game has some inter­est­ing pieces involved. This includes the aged Brett Favre who still can throw a foot­ball pretty far and the Cow­boys QB Tony Romo whom I heard a sports com­men­ta­tor on the radio today describe as a “cute puppy with  his hat on backwards.”

Seri­ously, Dal­las has come a long way. I might even root for them. I am not one of those Cow­boys band­wagon fans. I once long ago was a fan then I got turned off by that whole “America’s Team” thing. Since then I pretty much hated the Cow­boys until that loud­mouth Ter­rell Owens left. I would like to see coach Wade Phillips do good. As  I have men­tioned before he is from my area — hav­ing grad­u­ated in the same Texas county in which I reside (Jef­fer­son) at Port Neches-Groves High School. Plus, he is the son of prob­a­bly my favorite all-time coach, Bum Phillips, who helped the Oil­ers pro­vide some excite­ment in their games.

At the very least I plan to watch the game. As for the oth­ers, well New Orleans is my favorite NFL team left right now since the Tex­ans didn’t make the play­offs. In the AFC, since the Tex­ans didn’t have the cards in their favor I guess either Indi­anapo­lis or San Diego would do as my pref­er­ence. I would like to see a New Orleans and Indi­anapo­lis Super Bowl or a Saints-Chargers Super Bowl. So many times though, I don’t get what I wish for so …

Have a fine foot­ball weekend.