I'm losing my excitement for the game

[RustyBourneHorse]

There's always soccer.

I like that sport lol.

 

[Pokes12]

And that sucks! Been the most diehard fan of the Cowboys and the NFL in general for almost 45 years now. The excitement just isnt there anymore, at least not like it was. Nothing the Cowboys really did either, more just the state of the league. Free agency and the cap REALLY hurt the game worse than any of some of the younger fans will ever know. It takes years to build a championship caliber team, and one offseason to tear it down because you cant get under the cap.

So lemme get this straight.......You spend a few years really knocking it out of the park come draft day, really doing it right,....and your reward for doing a great job is to sit back and watch half your players leave because you cant pay all the big name players you were smart enuff to draft and groom and still be under the cap. REALLY? By the same token,.... you spend years drafting a bunch of worthless BUMS and your reward is having plenty of money to sign as many talented players as you want away from the teams who were proficient at their job. REALLY? The NFL is actually penalizing excellence and rewarding failure......... NOT GOOD.

Other thing is all the rule changes. D.B's are pretty much defenseless nowadays. You touch someone....... penalty. All to promote passing. The game doesnt even resemble the great game I grew up loving.

Goodell and his crap and unfair treatment of our team. Its just too much anymore.

Players SOOOO STUPID that they cant stop stepping on their own johnsons and getting suspended all the time. Its just on and on and on.

I'll always be a big fan,... but it will NEVER be what it once was. Real shame too.

Very well said. The league is a deteriorating asset. The commissioner is a joke, the refs are awful the rules are incomprehensible and subject to the weirdest interpretations. The game is so bad now that they keep a referee on call to give expert analysis of rules that make no sense. This is not the game I loved when I was a kid. The rules were understood and we did not coddle the players. Play flag football if you don't want to play tackle football. The college game is far superior today than the NFl which has become a joke a mnute league full of so many idiotic rules from kneeling in the anthem to how you can run with your head down. Way too much time is spent dealing with rules and replays and much less time about playing what is a GAME, nothing more, nothing less. Not the United Nations, not the Supreme Court, a game with a ball and a field. Put the fun back into football and stop the madness!!!!!!!!!!!!!! OBTW, the Commissioner is a nerd and a fascist who has been allowed to wreck the game. Get him out.

 

[EMMITTnROY]

So lemme get this straight.......You spend a few years really knocking it out of the park come draft day, really doing it right,....and your reward for doing a great job is to sit back and watch half your players leave because you cant pay all the big name players you were smart enuff to draft and groom and still be under the cap. REALLY? By the same token,.... you spend years drafting a bunch of worthless BUMS and your reward is having plenty of money to sign as many talented players as you want away from the teams who were proficient at their job. REALLY? The NFL is actually penalizing excellence and rewarding failure......... NOT GOOD.

.

As a cowboys fan who is also an OKC Thunder fan, this part really hit home.

 

[ghst187]

In addition to th points in the OP, I would add that the addition of new teams back...adding Carolina, Jax, then Balt/Cleve....further diluted talent noticeably right away. They should fold a team or two. Secondly, the rule changes have been crummy in many cases but I find the inconsistency in officiating infuriating and threatens the integrity of many games routinely.
As an add on to that, instant replay is terrible although it has improved as a timely process, officials sometimes still get the call wrong even after a 14th commercial break to review a call. The commissioner is a scum bag too.
Thirdly, getting older changes your perception of things as jay noted. To me, age has allowed me to see the absolute absurdity the game of American football truly is. Try to explain to a foreigner some day. Illuminating.

 

[RustyBourneHorse]

In addition to th points in the OP, I would add that the addition of new teams back...adding Carolina, Jax, then Balt/Cleve....further diluted talent noticeably right away. They should fold a team or two. Secondly, the rule changes have been crummy in many cases but I find the inconsistency in officiating infuriating and threatens the integrity of many games routinely.
As an add on to that, instant replay is terrible although it has improved as a timely process, officials sometimes still get the call wrong even after a 14th commercial break to review a call. The commissioner is a scum bag too.
Thirdly, getting older changes your perception of things as jay noted. To me, age has allowed me to see the absolute absurdity the game of American football truly is. Try to explain to a foreigner some day. Illuminating.

Well, I think Cleveland should be on the fast track to being folded if they can't win at least 4 games with the draft picks that they've had this season.

 

[Cowboys22]

And that sucks! Been the most diehard fan of the Cowboys and the NFL in general for almost 45 years now. The excitement just isnt there anymore, at least not like it was. Nothing the Cowboys really did either, more just the state of the league. Free agency and the cap REALLY hurt the game worse than any of some of the younger fans will ever know. It takes years to build a championship caliber team, and one offseason to tear it down because you cant get under the cap.

So lemme get this straight.......You spend a few years really knocking it out of the park come draft day, really doing it right,....and your reward for doing a great job is to sit back and watch half your players leave because you cant pay all the big name players you were smart enuff to draft and groom and still be under the cap. REALLY? By the same token,.... you spend years drafting a bunch of worthless BUMS and your reward is having plenty of money to sign as many talented players as you want away from the teams who were proficient at their job. REALLY? The NFL is actually penalizing excellence and rewarding failure......... NOT GOOD.

Other thing is all the rule changes. D.B's are pretty much defenseless nowadays. You touch someone....... penalty. All to promote passing. The game doesnt even resemble the great game I grew up loving.

Goodell and his crap and unfair treatment of our team. Its just too much anymore.

Players SOOOO STUPID that they cant stop stepping on their own johnsons and getting suspended all the time. Its just on and on and on.

I'll always be a big fan,... but it will NEVER be what it once was. Real shame too.

Welcome to the party. Most of us arrived a few years ago but happy you made it.

 

[windward]

I think they're actually doing a great job of maximizing revenue. It's just coming at the expense of hollowing out the product. We haven't seen it yet, but when it gets hollowed out enough--if they don't reverse the trend before that--then when it does finally crash, it's going to crash hard. Sort of like ESPN has. They were traveling down that road to hell for years and just didn't do anything about it.

How do you think they should reverse this trend?

 

[CowboyRoy]

And that sucks! Been the most diehard fan of the Cowboys and the NFL in general for almost 45 years now. The excitement just isnt there anymore, at least not like it was. Nothing the Cowboys really did either, more just the state of the league. Free agency and the cap REALLY hurt the game worse than any of some of the younger fans will ever know. It takes years to build a championship caliber team, and one offseason to tear it down because you cant get under the cap.

So lemme get this straight.......You spend a few years really knocking it out of the park come draft day, really doing it right,....and your reward for doing a great job is to sit back and watch half your players leave because you cant pay all the big name players you were smart enuff to draft and groom and still be under the cap. REALLY? By the same token,.... you spend years drafting a bunch of worthless BUMS and your reward is having plenty of money to sign as many talented players as you want away from the teams who were proficient at their job. REALLY? The NFL is actually penalizing excellence and rewarding failure......... NOT GOOD.

Other thing is all the rule changes. D.B's are pretty much defenseless nowadays. You touch someone....... penalty. All to promote passing. The game doesnt even resemble the great game I grew up loving.

Goodell and his crap and unfair treatment of our team. Its just too much anymore.

Players SOOOO STUPID that they cant stop stepping on their own johnsons and getting suspended all the time. Its just on and on and on.

I'll always be a big fan,... but it will NEVER be what it once was. Real shame too.

Agreed, but you need to admit why you really aren't interested. Its because the Cowboys haven't been relevant for a long long time. And the hope of being relevant or actually winning a SB are slim to none. AS long as we have Garrett as a coach and THIS FO pulling the strings. The NFL brought the competition down to depending on proper management and coaching and away from guys with big pockets. Jones simply cant keep up.

We will NEVER win anything big until we get real head coaching around here. Not going to happen. And yah, it makes watching football a joke these days. Throwing in players protesting and you have what amounts to little interest.

 

[TheDoctor]

Well knowing that most of this is rigged makes you not even care anymore...Oh welllllllllllll....

 

[Idgit]

How do you think they should reverse this trend?

Man, it's tough. The things I don't like right now:

--Parity is good, but games/seasons/championships come down to official interpretations way too often. Like the Dez-catch, or the unsportsmanlike conduct penalty for Cowboys fans. Or the way DET got jobbed in ATL this season. If every game is a toss up, there's not as much meaning to building a winning franchise. I like parity to a degree, but they've overdone it.

--The rulebook contains too many judgement call rules when it doesn't need to. I mean, what's a catch again? It's ridiculously convoluted in terms of what's a play and what's a clean hit. Again, opening up too much for interpretation and putting way too much onus on officiating.

--Officials should be year round, and there shouldn't be so much variation between groups of officials affecting outcomes of games

--The league is saturated, with too many games available on too many nights. Having more content accessible to more people is obviously good for the league, but we're past a saturation point where you get diminishing enthusiasm for even the good games.

--The league has an appearance of bias for and against teams, especially in favor of specific agendas they think will probably advance viewership. Domestic violence, marijuana, etc. Not stepping into the details re: those issues, but it's ending up with players getting unnecessarily suspended and teams not getting treated fairly relative to the rest of the league and coloring the results of seasons. Goodell has tarnished the shield more than any commissioner in history. He's terrible, and he's the front-man for the appearance of an ownership money-grab that makes the whole league look sketchy. He's got to go.

--Finally, they need to insist on a higher quality of coverage of their product from their sports network partners. The cheesy orchestrated 'debate' format shows where idiots yell nonsense at each other for 5 hours per week contributes to the air of sensationalism that's hollowing out the brand. They need to insist on a better quality of coverage.

 

[Aerolithe_Lion]

I used to have this argument with Yankee fans. I understand your point, I really do.

But the problem is who else is set to profit from it? My counter to the Yankee fan is you go find the other 6 teams that share your viewpoint and go make your league where everyone is allowed to be king, and the other 26 teams will stay in the NFL. Cowboys/Steelers every single Sunday until the end of time? Sounds good right?

Absolute power corrupts absolutely. Few Monarchs actually sit and ponder about the people who hate them. How does this league benefit the Browns? How does this league benefit the Texans? The Colts, the Jets, the Chargers, the Chiefs, the Seahawks, the Lions, the Bears, the Saints, the Buccaneers, the Eagles, the Falcons, the Panthers, the Ravens, the Bengals, the Patriots, the Jaguars, the Titans, or the Packers?

You could find a handful of Super Bowl rings amongst that group, but beyond that every single one of them was a walking failure during the "Good Ole Days." You could argue that they couldn't build a team due to incompetency, and I would counter that just as the rich get richer in your scenario, the poor are perpetually kicked while they're down.

The real problem is the Cowboys ruled in that era and have failed to figure out how to do it in this era. If they were doing what the Pats, the Packers, or the Steelers have done since free agency started, you would be perfectly fine with it. But they haven't. Don't blame the league for handing you a blueprint to success, blame Mister Jones for refusing to assimilate. Free Agency has permanently sullied the brand of the Dallas Cowboys, but your blame is misguided.

 

[Clove]

If not for the former DC.com and now CZ, I doubt that I would even follow the NFL any longer. It is not the sport that I would miss, it's the people on the forums, they've become far more important to me than the Cowboys or the NFL. I watch to be able to halfway carry on a conversation here.

I see what you're saying, but when someone is not on the same page with you, it gets annoying. I'm a person who likes to win, I like everything about winning. So right now, I don't care what the Cowboys do or don't do, just win.

I don't care about what goes on off the field, what this coach said or what that person said, I care about if our philosophy is good enough to put W's in the column. Is our scheme good enough to win, because Philly's is. We've seen 8 years of JG and I just don't see the light at the end of this tunnel, and it seems like we're all at the mercy of the Joneses.

I don't care about who did what, if Ware had 40 sacks in a year, if Romo threw for 700 yards one game, if Dez Bryant caught 8 touch downs in a game, none of that stuff has put us in the Super Bowl, so I don't care. Yeah I liked Witten, but I'm not gushing over him because he, along with others, didn't help us win titles. Those guys that aren't here anymore, good riddance. The guys that are here, I'm on your team until I'm no longer on your team.

I'm just sick and tired of going home every year empty handed, I just wish this nightmare would end.

 

[Corso]

I see what you're saying, but when someone is not on the same page with you, it gets annoying. I'm a person who likes to win, I like everything about winning. So right now, I don't care what the Cowboys do or don't do, just win.

I don't care about what goes on off the field, what this coach said or what that person said, I care about if our philosophy is good enough to put W's in the column. Is our scheme good enough to win, because Philly's is. We've seen 8 years of JG and I just don't see the light at the end of this tunnel, and it seems like we're all at the mercy of the Joneses.

I don't care about who did what, if Ware had 40 sacks in a year, if Romo threw for 700 yards one game, if Dez Bryant caught 8 touch downs in a game, none of that stuff has put us in the Super Bowl, so I don't care. Yeah I liked Witten, but I'm not gushing over him because he, along with others, didn't help us win titles. Those guys that aren't here anymore, good riddance. The guys that are here, I'm on your team until I'm no longer on your team.

I'm just sick and tired of going home every year empty handed, I just wish this nightmare would end.

You need to spend 6 months with me. Life is AMAZING.

 

[Clove]

You need to spend 6 months with me. Life is AMAZING.

I do try to enjoy life when I'm not on here being depressed, so I get it. Why is life amazing for you?

 

[CPanther95]

There's always soccer.

No really a spectator sport unless you're the father of an 8 year old boy, or 10 year old girl - and they're playing.

 

[Corso]

I do try to enjoy life when I'm not on here being depressed, so I get it. Why is life amazing for you?

The limitless possibilities of this Earth and it's inhabitants and sensory indulgences to no end. There is so much to do and wonder upon! I love this planet and everything that came before us and what is to come!

 

[Established1971]

I am about your age. Can name ya the starting offensive line of the 72 Super Bowl team. Been through alot including 5 championships. Nothing is ever as great as teams in your youth but I still enjoy the day to day of Cowboys football in the present. I don't know every player on every team the way I used to but I still get a lot of enjoyment (and disappointment) out of the game. Hang in there, buddy, when we are on a Super Bowl run this year, you'll be right back in it!!

Tony Liscio ! (I didnt look it up, am I right?)

 

[Established1971]

Hate when old people cry because things aren’t the exact same as “back in my day”....the league is fine and no one is out to get the cowboys.

blissfully naive

 

[Corso]

I do try to enjoy life when I'm not on here being depressed, so I get it. Why is life amazing for you?

First thing we should do is go to Juarez and mix it up at a good, traditional Mexican bar. Good times, good people and sketchy Mezcal! Hopefully, if everything goes right: you get back across the border and I'll show up 2 days later.
At first you'll hate it and everything about it... then you'll think that was pretty cool. And then it's stories for years and years you'll endlessly tell everyone who can hear.

 

[9darter]

Man, it's tough. The things I don't like right now:

--Parity is good, but games/seasons/championships come down to official interpretations way too often. Like the Dez-catch, or the unsportsmanlike conduct penalty for Cowboys fans. Or the way DET got jobbed in ATL this season. If every game is a toss up, there's not as much meaning to building a winning franchise. I like parity to a degree, but they've overdone it.

--The rulebook contains too many judgement call rules when it doesn't need to. I mean, what's a catch again? It's ridiculously convoluted in terms of what's a play and what's a clean hit. Again, opening up too much for interpretation and putting way too much onus on officiating.

--Officials should be year round, and there shouldn't be so much variation between groups of officials affecting outcomes of games

--The league is saturated, with too many games available on too many nights. Having more content accessible to more people is obviously good for the league, but we're past a saturation point where you get diminishing enthusiasm for even the good games.

--The league has an appearance of bias for and against teams, especially in favor of specific agendas they think will probably advance viewership. Domestic violence, marijuana, etc. Not stepping into the details re: those issues, but it's ending up with players getting unnecessarily suspended and teams not getting treated fairly relative to the rest of the league and coloring the results of seasons. Goodell has tarnished the shield more than any commissioner in history. He's terrible, and he's the front-man for the appearance of an ownership money-grab that makes the whole league look sketchy. He's got to go.

--Finally, they need to insist on a higher quality of coverage of their product from their sports network partners. The cheesy orchestrated 'debate' format shows where idiots yell nonsense at each other for 5 hours per week contributes to the air of sensationalism that's hollowing out the brand. They need to insist on a better quality of coverage.

This. All of this.