How the Cowboys Were Born: A Fight Song, an 0-11-1 Start and 'Next Year's Champions'

The Cowboys are the most valuable, most watched brand in American sports, so it's easy to forget they started as an afterthought. The NFL gave Dallas a team late, after the draft, mostly to block a rival league. The first season they didn't win a game.

Here's how the Cowboys were born, why they spent a decade being called "Next Year's Champions," and what finally changed.

A team created to stop another league

When Lamar Hunt couldn't get an NFL team for Dallas, he helped start the American Football League and put his own team there, the Dallas Texans. The NFL didn't want to give up the South to the new league, so it awarded Dallas a franchise. The catch was timing. The team was approved after the 1960 college draft, so the NFL's first modern expansion team played its first season without drafting a single college player.

There was another obstacle: Washington owner George Preston Marshall. His team had been the only NFL club in the South for more than 20 years, and he opposed a team in Texas. Dallas' future owners, Clint Murchison Jr. and Bedford Wynne, had a creative answer. They bought the rights to Washington's fight song, "Hail to the Redskins," and threatened not to let Marshall's team play it. Marshall changed his mind, and Dallas got its franchise on January 28, 1960. That fight helped start one of the league's most heated rivalries.

The team was first known as the Steers, then the Rangers. In March 1960 it became the Cowboys, partly to avoid confusion with a minor league baseball team called the Dallas Rangers.

The front office that built it

Murchison hired Tex Schramm as president and general manager, Gil Brandt to run player personnel and New York Giants defensive coordinator Tom Landry as head coach. Then he mostly stayed out of the way. That patience is one of the most important parts of this story.

Because the start was rough. The 1960 Cowboys went 0-11-1 with a roster full of players past their prime. They shared the Cotton Bowl with Hunt's Texans, who were winning more games and drawing more fans. The first win came in the opening game of 1961, against Pittsburgh.

Building slowly

The talent came one draft and one trade at a time: Don Meredith in 1960; Bob Lilly, Don Perkins and Chuck Howley in 1961; Lee Roy Jordan in 1963; Mel Renfro in 1964; Bob Hayes and Dan Reeves in 1965. The Cowboys went 7-7 in 1965, and the next year they broke through at 10-3-1 for their first winning season. It started an NFL-record 20 straight winning seasons through 1985.

"Next Year's Champions"

Then came the heartbreak. Dallas lost the 1966 NFL title game to Green Bay 34-27 after a goal-line stand with 28 seconds left. The next year they lost to the Packers again, 21-17, on Bart Starr's one-yard sneak with 16 seconds left in the "Ice Bowl," the coldest game in NFL history at about 13 below zero. After the 1968 and 1969 seasons, they lost to Cleveland in the playoffs. The label stuck: a team that couldn't "win the big one."

Even reaching Super Bowl V didn't end it. Dallas lost 16-13 to Baltimore on a field goal with five seconds left.

The breakthrough

In 1971 Landry made Roger Staubach the permanent starter midway through the season. Dallas won its last seven regular season games, then beat Minnesota and San Francisco in the playoffs. In Super Bowl VI the Cowboys ran for a then-record 252 yards and beat Miami 24-3, with Staubach named MVP. "Next Year's Champions" were finally champions.

Our Take

The lesson of the early Cowboys is patience at the top. An owner who trusted his football people, a coach given years to build, and a roster built one smart pick at a time. The heartbreaks were real, but they came from a team good enough to keep getting close.

How 'bout them Cowboys.

Sources: [Wikipedia, History of the Dallas Cowboys](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Dallas_Cowboys), [Wikipedia, History of the Kansas City Chiefs](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Kansas_City_Chiefs)