Part of being a true fan of a team involves a stubborn refusal to understand that the other team has fans of its own who care about their team as much as you care about yours. Impossible! The other team is nothing more than Opponent. When you are watching on Sunday afternoon, all you want to know is: How do we kill these guys? Whom do we boo? Die, humans wearing different colors than the colors for which I have grown accustomed to cheering!
We are here to help. With a slight nod to Drew Magary’s Why Your Team Sucks series, we want to give you three people to scream at on the television every Sunday, peppering Cheetos flecks in every direction. The Giants play the Dallas Cowboys at Cowboys Stadium at 8:20 p.m. on Sunday. Here’s whom to boo on the Cowboys.
Jerry Jones: We’re told that, for many Americans, one of the more enjoyable aspects of being a sports fan is hating on the Yankees. This is too bad for Yankee fans, because not only are they unable to hate on their favorite team, they’re oftentimes forced to defend its egotistical ownership and free-spending ways. Luckily for them, many Yankees fans also happen to be Giants fans, which means they can just double down on the vitriol they aim at the Cowboys’ owner. Like his baseball counterpart, he doesn’t just think his team is the greatest, most important, most American team in the land, he knows it. And don’t bother criticizing him, because you’re wrong. He’ll tell you himself, and he’ll do it with an annoying Texas accent.
Tony Romo: Really, where to begin? We once argued on this site that the reason we loved Eli Manning was because he wasn’t a celebrity playboy like Tom Brady, but an aw-shucks antiques aficionado who lived in Hoboken with his wife. Well, Romo’s just like Brady, except that Romo’s never won anything. No MVPs, no Super Bowl rings — hell, no playoff games. The chasm between accomplishment and notoriety is vast here. (If only “Drew Bledsoe” was still updating his blog.) Also, he doesn’t know his vocal limitations as well as Mr. Belding does. Also, Cabo.
Wade Phillips: There was a point last season when the Cowboys were the Vegas favorites to win the Super Bowl. By the end of the season, Phillips was overseeing one of the more dysfunctional teams in football, thanks to the Tony Romo–Terrell Owens–Jason Whitten–Ed Werder drama. But he’s still the coach, much to the dismay of some Cowboys fans. (If you Google the phrase “Wade Phillips,” the first result is his Wikipedia page, and the second is firewadephillips.com.) So if you’re at a bar and have a good Phillips insult you’d like to yell at the TV, be sure to do it early, lest one of the Cowboys fans in attendance beat you to it.