Thursday 16 June 2016

Dallas Cowboys

The Dallas Cowboys are a professional American football team located in the
Dallas–Fort Worth metroplex. The Cowboys compete in the National Football League (NFL) as a member club of the league's National Football Conference (NFC) East division. They are headquartered in Valley Ranch in Irving, Texas. The headquarters will move to Frisco, Texas in 2016. The team plays its home games at AT&T Stadium in Arlington, Texas, which opened for the 2009 season. The stadium took its current name prior to the 2013 season. The Cowboys joined the NFL as an expansion team in 1960. The team's national following might best be represented by its NFL record of consecutive sell-outs. The Cowboys' streak of 190 consecutive sold-out regular and post-season games (home and away) began in 2002. The franchise shares the record for most Super Bowl appearances (8) with the Pittsburgh Steelers, New England Patriots, and the Denver Broncos, corresponding to most NFC championships (8). The Cowboys won five (5) of those Super Bowl appearances, tying them with their NFC rivals, the San Francisco 49ers, both are second to Pittsburgh's record six (6) Super Bowl championships. The Cowboys are the only NFL team to record 20 straight winning seasons (1966–85), in which they only missed the playoffs twice (1974 and 1984), an NFL record that remains unchallenged.

In 2015, the Dallas Cowboys became the first sports team to be valued at $4 billion, making it the most valuable sports team in the world, according to Forbes. The Cowboys also generated $620 million in revenue in 2014, a record for a U.S. sports team.

At home against the New York Giants, Dallas was leading 6-3 with just under 2:00 before halftime. With the hurry-up offense Tony Romo threw a completed pass to Cole Beasley. After passing the first down marker, he appeared to be heading for the sidelines, but then cut back sharply to gain more yardage. He then fumbled the ball and a Giants player picked the ball up and ran 57 yards for a touchdown. Dallas got the ball back before half, when Romo threw a pass a little behind Jason Witten. Witten got his hand on the ball, but couldn't pull it in before the Giants intercepted. The Giants scored a field goal to take a 13-6 lead at halftime. In the fourth quarter, with Dallas trailing 26-20, Romo rushed Dallas down field to the Giants' 11 yard line. On the next play, the ball was snapped low and Romo fumbled the ball. He quickly picked the ball up an threw to Witten at the goal line for an 11-yard touchdown with 7 second remaining in the game. Dallas won 27-26. Dez Bryant left the game early with a fractured bone in his foot.

On the road against the Philadelphia Eagles, they played against their star running back from last year, DeMarco Murray. Dallas defense held strong holding Murray to 2 yards on 13 carries. But in the 3rd quarter with Dallas ahead 13-0, Tony Romo was being sacked and fumbled the ball away. Romo was still on the ground injured. He suffered a broken left collarbone, the same one he injured in 2010. Dallas' only other quarterback, Brandon Weeden came into the game. He completed 7 of 7 passes for 73 yards, including a 42-yard touchdown pass to Terrance Williams. Dallas won 20-10 to start out with 2 wins and 0 losses. They would then go on a seven-game losing streak to fall to 2-7-0.

After a 19-16 loss to the Jets on December 19, 2015 during a Saturday Night Edition of Thursday Night and falling to 4-10-0, the Dallas Cowboys were officially eliminated from playoff contention.

The Cotton Bowl is a stadium which opened in 1932 and became known as "The House That Doak Built" due to the immense crowds that former SMU running back Doak Walker drew to the stadium during his college career in the late 1940s. Originally known as the Fair Park Bowl, it is located in Fair Park, site of the State Fair of Texas. Concerts or other events using a stage allow the playing field to be used for additional spectators. The Cotton Bowl was the longtime home of the annual Cotton Bowl Classic college football bowl game, for which the stadium is named. (Beginning with the January 2010 game, the Cotton Bowl Classic has been played at Cowboys Stadium in Arlington.) The Dallas Cowboys called the Cotton Bowl home for 11 years, from the team's formation in 1960 until 1971, when the Cowboys moved to Texas Stadium. It is the only Cowboys stadium within the Dallas city limits. The Cowboys hosted the Green Bay Packers for the 1966 NFL Championship at the Cotton Bowl.

AT&T Stadium, previously named Cowboys Stadium, is a domed stadium with a retractable roof in Arlington, Texas. After failed negotiations to build a new stadium on the site of the Cotton Bowl, Jerry Jones along with the city of Arlington, Texas a suburb of Fort Worth, funded the stadium at a cost of $1.3 billion. The stadium is located in Tarrant County, the first time the Cowboys will call a stadium home outside of Dallas County. It was completed on May 29, 2009 and seats 80,000, but is expandable to seat up to 100,000. Cowboys Stadium is the largest domed stadium in the world.[24]

A highlight of AT&T Stadium is its gigantic, center-hung high-definition television screen, the largest in the world. The 160 by 72 feet (49 by 22 m), 11,520-square-foot (1,070 m2) scoreboard surpasses the 8,736 sq ft (812 m2) screen that opened in 2009 at the renovated Kauffman Stadium in Kansas City, Missouri as the world's largest.[25][26][27]

At the debut pre-season game of Cowboys Stadium, a punt by Tennessee Titans kicker, A. J. Trapasso, hit the 2,100 in. screen above the field. The punt deflected and was ruled in-play until Titans coach Jeff Fisher informed the officials that the punt struck the scoreboard. (Many believe Trapasso was trying to hit the suspended scoreboard, based on replays and the angle of the kick.) The scoreboard is, however, within the regulation of the NFL guidelines — hanging approximately five feet above the minimum height. No punts hit the scoreboard during the entire 2009 regular season during an actual game. Also, on August 22, 2009, the day after AJ Trapasso hit the screen, many fans touring the facility noted that half of the field was removed with large cranes re-positioning the screen. According to some fans, a tour guide explained that Jerry Jones invited a few professional soccer players to drop kick soccer balls to try to hit the screen. Once he observed them hitting it consistently he had the screen moved up another 10 feet.

The first regular season home game of the 2009 season was against the New York Giants. A league record-setting 105,121 fans showed up completely to pack Cowboys Stadium for the game before which the traditional "blue star" at the 50-yard line was unveiled for the first time; however, the Cowboys lost in the final seconds, 33–31.

The Cowboys got their first regular season home win on September 28, 2009. They beat the Carolina Panthers 21–7 with 90,588 in attendance. The game was televised on ESPN's Monday Night Football and marked a record 42nd win for the Cowboys on MNF.

On July 25, 2013, the Cowboys announced that AT&T will take over the naming rights for the stadium.

s of 2010, the Cowboys' flagship radio station is KRLD-FM. Brad Sham is the team's longtime play-by-play voice. Working alongside him is former Cowboy quarterback Babe Laufenberg, who returned in 2007 after a one-year absence to replace former safety Charlie Waters. The Cowboys, who retain rights to all announcers, chose not to renew Laufenberg's contract in 2006 and brought in Waters. However, Laufenberg did work as the analyst on the "Blue Star Network", which televises Cowboys preseason games not shown on national networks. The anchor station is KTVT, the CBS owned and operated station in Dallas. Previous stations which aired Cowboys games included KVIL-FM, KRLD, and KLUV-FM. Kristi Scales is the sideline reporter on the radio broadcasts.

During his tenure as Cowboys coach, Tom Landry co-hosted his own coach's show with late veteran sportscaster Frank Glieber and later with Brad Sham. Landry's show was famous for his analysis of raw game footage and for he and his co-host making their NFL "predictions" at the end of each show. Glieber is one of the original voices of the Cowboys Radio Network, along with Bill Mercer, famous for calling the Ice Bowl of 1967 and both Super Bowl V and VI. Mercer is perhaps best known as the ringside commentator of World Class Championship Wrestling in the 1980s. Upon Mercer's departure, Verne Lundquist joined the network, and became their play-by-play announcer by 1977, serving eight years in that capacity before handing those chores permanently over to Brad Sham, who joined the network in 1977 as the color analyst and occasional fill-in for Lundquist.

Longtime WFAA-TV sports anchor Dale Hansen was the Cowboys color analyst with Brad Sham as the play-by-play announcer from 1985–1996.

Dave Garrett served as the Cowboys' play-by-play announcer from 1995–97, when Brad Sham left the team and joined the Texas Rangers' radio network team as well as broadcast Sunday Night Football on Westwood One.

Seeking to expand its radio broadcasting scope nationally, the Cowboys began a five-year partnership with Compass Media Networks on February 2, 2011. The result was the America's Team Radio Network, a supplement to the franchise's regional one. Beginning with the 2011 season, Kevin Burkhardt and Danny White handled the broadcasts, with Jerry Recco as the studio host.

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