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Dave Shabaz
Well, football season is over. You might be thinking, ‘Dave, the playoffs are still in progress, so football season isn’t over yet.’ Well, my philosophy has always been, when your team is mathematically eliminated from playoff contention, the season is over, and being a lifelong Chicago Bears fan, my season ended sometime in October.
But, wherever my career in the newspaper business has taken me, the deal I made with myself was this, I would make the nearest pro sports team in the state, my second team. Now don’t get ahead of yourself, I won’t wear any other gear, you know, jerseys, hats, etc, of any other team except my Chicago teams (but never the White Sox.) I will root for my second team, unless they are playing one of my Chicago teams.
So, this long-winded introduction is meant to say that football season is officially over since the Cowboys lost last Sunday. I wanted to take this opportunity to share with the local Cowboys fans something they probably would never know, unless they traveled a lot and were fortunate enough to watch their team in various sports bars and restaurants around the country, which I have been fortunate to have done.
From California to Arizona, North Carolina, Iowa, Chicago and even in Puerto Vallarta, Mexico, I’ve been lucky enough to sit in a Buffalo Wild Wings or some other similar establishment and enjoy some football with a bunch of strangers. Most of these strangers are regulars at that particular restaurant or sports bar and they come in every week with their jerseys on, pumped up for that week’s game. So, I feel like I’m truly qualified to make some judgments about various fans and their behaviors.
I obviously won’t go over every team because that would take too much time, but the Cowboys do have fans in every city I’ve lived in or visited. Before I get to the Cowboys, let me tell you about the absolute worst fans and by worst, I mean the most obnoxious and embarrassingly ignorant fans, and they are Philadelphia Eagles fans. From state to state, I’ve never witnessed louder ignorance than I have with Eagles fans. They come in the establishment already stupid and 15 beers later, they’re shouting the most incoherent and annoying things, ruining all the games being shown on the 30 or so televisions in the place. They wear their ignorance like it was a badge of honor.
This was especially true when I lived in North Carolina and my daughter and I were regulars every week at the same Buffalo Wild Wings. We got to know the servers and the other fans who were also regulars and it was actually a lot of fun for us. All of us would cringe when the Eagles fans would come in. My daughter and I would actually look at each other and say, “damn!” And she would end up telling me over and over, “Dad, don’t say anything to them.”
But I was shocked when I moved to Texas and noticed that the actual Texas Cowboys fans are not really loud or obnoxious in their fandom. The reason that I was shocked was because all around the country, the Cowboys fans are running a close second to the Eagles fans. The big difference for me was, and this is absolutely true, I’ve noticed that most Cowboys fans all over the country are pretty knowledgeable, especially when it comes to Cowboys history. The Eagles fans just appear as if they’ve all suffered traumatic brain injuries at one point or another in their lives and are now unable to control the volume of their voices and what comes out of their mouths.
And, I don’t think this is a coincidence, but I’ve found in my research that Chicago Bears fans were the classiest fans anywhere. I don’t think I’m being biased either, because I asked my daughters and they both agreed.
Next season, the Cowboys will be good again and my Bears better not screw up the first pick in this year’s draft! We didn’t finish last for nothing.