Category: Cowboys (Page 48 of 55)

Jessica Ono

December 17, 2007 / Allan / 4 Comments

Tony Romo went to the lockerroom at halftime of yesterday’s loss to the Eagles carrying a quarterback rating that was the same as his jersey number. He finished the game with three interceptions, two fumbles, four sacks, one bruised thumb, and a 22.2 QB rating, the lowest of his brief career. The Cowboys failed to score a touchdown for the first time since November 2004 when a team that finished 6-10 and seemingly started a new quarterback every week lost to the Bengals.

Are you blaming Jessica Simpson?

Is she going to be the Yoko Ono of the Cowboys as I heard someone say this morning?

How much time did Romo have to put in Saturday night and Sunday morning arranging for tickets, transportation, meals, and other stuff related to the game for the Simpson family? Was he trying to show off for his new girlfriend and wound up pressing too hard and blowing it? If he was distracted by her being at the game, what was it specifically?

The theories are numerous. Did her pink Cowboys jersey offend the football gods? Is spending time with Jessica rubbing off on Romo in a way that’s making him dumber every day? She can’t tell the difference between chicken and tuna. One month with her and he can’t read a tackle-stunt or a corner blitz. Coincidence?

All I know is that the beautiful girl has always brought down the superhero. Everytime a superhero gets in trouble, you can always trace it back to the distraction of a pretty girl. It happened regularly to Indiana Jones. Indy and Superman both spent way too much time and energy trying to rescue the girl who was distracting them from the big picture of what they were supposed to be doing, mainly because she was in the wrong place at the wrong time. In the way. It happened to Batman. It happened to Spiderman. It happened to Frank Drebin.

If it’s not Jessica Simpson, what was it? Romo’s never looked as awful as he looked yesterday. Ryan Leaf never looked as awful as Romo looked yesterday.

There is one other theory out there. And I must give the credit for this one to Norm.

He claims it’s Avery Johnson’s fault.

Avery Johnson, the Dallas Mavericks coach, was also at yesterday’s game, also sitting in a very prominent place at Texas Stadium. And the Cowboys spent all day settling for 3s.

Coincidence?

Peace,

Allan

Rick Romo Rules!

November 30, 2007 / Allan / 9 Comments

Random thoughts on last night’s really weird game. Was it really great or was it really awful? Most of the following thoughts revolve around the inconsistent and contradictory messages I kept getting while watching the Packers and Cowboys.

The hype and the buildup for the past two weeks has been Super-Bowl-esque. And rightly so. It’s been years since I looked forward to a Cowboys game like I did this one. The championship history of the two franchises. Favre and Romo. Homefield advantage in the NFC playoffs. And those 1960-63 Cowboys throw back unis! Love those uniforms. It’s hard not to root for whoever’s wearing those uniforms. They just drum up such wonderful images of Don Perkins and Don Meredith and Bob Hayes and Bob Lilly. Those are my all-time favorite Cowboys uniforms.

(Side note: the most disappointed I’ve ever been with the Cowboys, aside from the signing of Terrell Owens, was in 1994 when the NFL first encouraged its teams to wear throwback uniforms as part of the league’s 75th anniversary season. The Cowboys announced that they would wear their uniforms from the early ’60s for a Monday Night Game against the Lions. A buddy and I got tickets. We drove up from Marble Falls that afternoon. I couldn’t wait to see those clean blue and white uniforms in person, the ones I had only seen in pictures in old programs and in old TV clips. And the Cowboys came out in those horrid double-star monstrosities with their same silver helmets! Never mind the hideous nature of the double-star look that is nothing like what the Cowboys had ever worn in their storied history. None of it matched! Jerry Wayne exclaimed that the throwback helmets would each cost over $300 and that was too much to spend on something they were only going to do once. I was sick. I thought it was embarrassing. It’s the same kind of thing that led to this look for assistant coach John Blake. It’s about that time, the Barry Switzer era, when things began to turn for me.)

And before I mention anything about the game itself, can I please comment a bit on the NFL Network?

Are you kidding me?!?

Jerry Wayne and the NFL Network don’t have a case against any cable company that doesn’t want to air that stuff. Who would want to put that on their system? I couldn’t tell if I was watching the NFL game of the year between two great franchises for home field advantage or the local access presentation of the junior college scrimmage. The sideline microphones were so overmodulated I couldn’t understand a word Deion Sanders was saying. Although I’m certain it had something to do with Deion Sanders. We must have missed at least three extra-points because the cameras were somewhere else or they were airing a promo. I saw an old promo for the Thanksgiving Day matchup between the Colts and Falcons run at least once. The referee’s mic kept cutting out and I’m sure the NFL Network had something to do with that, too.

And Bryant Gumbel. Have you ever heard anyone do a worse job? It was like he’d never called a football game before. He kept calling the Cowboys the Packers, several times in the first quarter. As the Cowboys came out of the tunnel before kickoff he said, “Here come the Packers!” When the Cowboys had a first and goal he said it was the Packers. He called Marion Barber the “heart beat of the Packers.” At the end of the 3rd quarter when Dallas was in the red zone again he went to break exclaiming that the Cowboys were leading and “barking at the door.” I don’t think Fox or CBS would ever use this guy, not even on their D-Team calling the Cardinals and Dolphins. Brian Baldinger does a better job. It was amazing. And then Gumbel tops it off by telling his audience at the end of the game to stay tuned for the “Wendy’s Post-Game Show, I mean the Home Depot Post-Game show” where we hope to get a few words down on the field with Cowboys quarterback “Rick Romo.”

I can’t believe the most powerful professional sports league in the history of the world, this league that does everything with excellence and class, that pays excruciating attention to the smallest of details, is being represented by this low-budget, duct-tape-and-twistie-ties network.

And then you’ve got the golden voice of NFL Films doing all the ins and outs to and from commercials. Talk about contradicting messages and conflicting signals.

How about the officials’ black winter pants? They look so much like NBA warm-up pants that I kept thinking, again, I was watching something that didn’t count. Is this practice or is this a real game in late November between two conference powers?

As I watched Aaron Rodgers, I couldn’t help but think about the Magic Man, Don Majkowski. His hair, his eyebrows, his nose. Yeah, maybe Barry Manilow, too. I don’t know.

I was surprised by the huge and loud numbers of Packers fans at Texas Stadium. Just the noise reminded me of a regular season game against the Steelers in 2004. Down on the sidelines, I was blown away at how the Steelers fans were louder than the Cowboys fans. It was like an away game that afternoon for Dallas as they lost a heart breaker to Ben Rothlisberger in his rookie season. Seemed that way again last night. And that’s very rare at Texas Stadium. But, imagine, that’s the way it is for every team that hosts the Cowboys in their stadium. Every time.

I love Geico commercials.

Tony Romo goes for over 300 yards again. He throws for four touchdowns again. And his line would say five TDs and zero interceptions instead of the 4 scores and one pick except for Terrell Owens’ inexplicable lateral to Al Harris in the end zone. That was weird. Being stripped by Harris on that first drive and his other two drops last night look like the Owens of last year and earlier this season. Did you see in the current issue of Sports Illustrated that T.O. was voted by his peers in the NFL as the number one easiest wide receiver to intimidate? Interesting that he has that kind of game last night, huh?

Lot of weird plays and crazy bounces. Those two plays with Owens were wild. But what about Green Bay’s onside kick in the first half? Every Cowboy on the field and even those on the bench had turned tail and run to set up the wedge. Nobody stayed home. The Packers could have let it roll 20 yards and been OK. But the ball bounced up and glanced off somebody’s elbow, negating what would have been a huge momentum play.

And then Favre. Even though his play was ridiculously horrible during the 20 minutes he played, I hate it that the game was decided with him on the sidelines. His QB rating for last night is officially 8.9. But doesn’t it take some of the luster off the win for Dallas that they didn’t get a 60-minute duel with the one guy who’s made the Packers what they are this season? Doesn’t it cheapen it a little? A little? I think you have to put an asterisk by this game because of that.

Weird game.

Rick Romo Rules!

Peace,

Allan

Favorite Day

November 19, 2007 / Allan / 1 Comment

Sunday is still my favorite day of the week.

I had to actually think about that three weeks ago when Carrie-Anne and I filled out a personal inventory / survey in the Young Families class here at Legacy. One of the questions in the “just getting to know you” section that included queries about favorite colors, books, vacation spots, etc., was “What is your favorite day of the week?” And I put Sunday. One of the other questions was “Employer, City” and I wrote “God, Heaven.” But Sunday really is my favorite day of the week because it’s the one day I get to spend with a thousand different Christian believers all in one building at one time. And, to me, that, just as much if not more than anything else, speaks to the power of our God. It testifies to the miracle of our Savior. It’s amazing to me that so many of us, from different backgrounds and different mindsets and worldviews and opinions and beliefs and customs and traditions and circumstances can be brought together as family in one place to submit to each other and love each and serve each other in the name of Jesus. Amazing.

God creates us, brings us together, and sustains us to be family. And it can be really messy.

As we make the move here at Legacy from a church that does small groups to a Small Groups Church, we talk all the time about how we don’t believe for a second that Small Groups is going to solve all our problems. If anything, it’s going to create a whole new set of problems. When a thousand people make the decision to get intimately involved in each other’s lives, it gets messy. None of us is perfect. We’ve all got our baggage and issues and viewpoints and struggles and faults. It won’t be easy.

Eugene Peterson—by now, you know, one of my favorite authors—writes about the church as a messy community in his book The Jesus Way.

“Community is intricate and complex. Living in community as a people of God is inherently messy. A congregation consists of people of various moods, ideas, needs, experiences, gifts and injuries, desires and disappointments, blessings and losses, intelligence and stupidity, living in proximity and in respect for one another, and believingly in worship of God. It is not easy and it is not simple. Not every situation can be anticipated. Novel combinations of circumstances take us by surprise. No community worth its salt has ever existed very long without attending painstakingly to particular conditions.”

All of this is true. And it’s never more true than when we all get together on Sundays. Despite our differences, we unite together in the blood of Jesus to worship our Father and love each other and serve each other.

Sunday is still my favorite day of the week because I get to see all of it up close. I stand in the back of the worship center during that closing song and benediction and look out over all my brothers and sisters and I’m moved at what God is able to do with his children. How does this continue to happen? I see the faces and the families while I’m preaching, recognizing my brothers and sisters who are hurting, rejoicing, worried, rebelling, working, arguing, and healing. How is that God keeps this thing together? It’s incredible to me.

Every Sunday is a roller coaster for me. A different roller coaster every week. I know every Sunday morning that there will be ups and downs and dangerous turns and even a couple of loops. But the ride is a little different every time. The good and the bad, the rejoicing and the mourning, the praise and the complaints, an exhilerating acceleration I didn’t expect, a gut-wrenching turn I didn’t see coming, all of us in the same car, all in the family of God. Every Sunday.

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9-1. How do you argue with that? 9-1. It speaks for itself. And it doesn’t matter who they’ve beaten or how small or large the margin of victory. 9-1 is what it is. It says the Cowboys are a very good football team. And there’s no other way to see it. Even if their pass defense is ranked 24th in the league. Even if Andre Gurod makes every shotgun snap a wild adventure. Even if Flozell Adams moves early like he’s got some kind of false start incentive clause in his contract. Even if Tony Romo throws sidearm. Even if Roy Williams couldn’t cover you on a post route. Even if their number one receiver is a proven ticking time bomb of a quarterback killer and a lockerroom cancer. Even if they don’t have a solid number one running back. 9-1 speaks for itself.

In a league in which it’s extremely difficult to win, the Cowboys keep winning. It’s very impressive. Things bounce their way. They make big plays when they have to. They make up for their mistakes. Their mutual confidence in their coaches and in each other is rare. They really, truly believe they can get to the Super Bowl and win it, regardless of whether they meet the Patriots or the Colts or the ’78 Steelers.

Yesterday’s win over the ‘Skins was impressive. Romo struggled. The secondary got lit up. Nobody appeared to be in sync. Coaches seemed a little confused. Play-calling was suspect.

And they won. They beat a division rival that was desperate for a win, much more desperate than the Cowboys were. Washington needed that game. But the Cowboys wouldn’t let them have it. Very impressive.

I just wish it could have been anybody — ANYBODY — other than Terrell Owens with the four scores.

Peace,

Allan

Go Ye Means Stay!

November 16, 2007 / Allan / 2 Comments

I don’t normally read all my favorite blogs every single day. Usually, once a week, I sit down for an hour or so and go through all of them and catch up. Jim Gardner’s blog is packed with insights and usually forces me to look something up in the Bible or in a book on my shelf or somewhere else on line. His blog takes me a while. With Jimmy Mitchell it only takes about three minutes since he only writes about once a month. (I miss you, Jimmy!) Our Youth Minister here at Legacy, Jason Brown, is only in his first month of full-time blogging. But he’s tackling some deep issues and asking some fairly heady questions. His takes me a while, too.

His Wednesday post on missions and mission trips meshed perfectly with my post from yesterday regarding the Rosemont effort in southwest Fort Worth. We had both gone to that kickoff and informational meeting together. So it’s no surprise that our thoughts were focused on the same things.

Our thoughts center on the concept of seeing our own neighborhoods, our own zip codes, as huge mission fields for the Kingdom. The idea of seeing the people all around us as the lost souls that they are, no more and no less important than the lost souls in Africa and South America. Jason’s specific questions deal with the practice of youth mission trips. Why spend all the time and money traveling outside the state or even the country when there’s just as much, if not more, work to be done right across the street?

Here’s what I commented on his blog late last night:

“I was visiting with some brothers and sisters Wednesday about the wonderful work the Rosemont Church of Christ is doing in southwest Fort Worth. They’ve donated their entire campus, all their buildings, and the land it sits on to Continent of Great Cities to plant a huge Spanish-speaking congregation in the middle of what is a huge Hispanic population base in DFW. The discussion turned to our own outreach effort at which point one of our spiritual leaders said, “We don’t have any poor people anywhere near our building. And nobody like that will ever drive to our church.”

That grieves me.

Attitudes and talk like that are nothing less than a writing off of precious people made in the image of our Father. The truth is there are plenty of low-income and/or Spanish-speaking people a stone throw’s away from our building. But we don’t think they’ll fit in. So we don’t even try. And we actively seek to discourage anyone else from trying.

What makes us think that God plants us here, blesses us here, provides for us here, and saves us here — right here in the middle of hundreds of thousands of lost souls — in order to take the Gospel somewhere else?

What makes us think it’s commendable to spend a week or two overseas preaching the Word while we ignore or, worse, write off all our neighbors right here in our own city? What gives us the gall?

I know your post already asks all these same questions. They are real. They are urgent. And they do demand answers.

I think you’re clearly on to something when you speak about our comfort zones. Evangelism is messy. We’d rather create a mess somewhere else and leave, I think, than make one in our own kitchen and have to live with it.”

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It’s sad, very sad, that Major League Baseball’s All-Time Home Run Champion is Barry Bonds.* He’s a lying cheat. But besides that, the holder of the sport’s most sacred record will spend time in federal prison and will never be inducted into the Hall of Fame. Here’s how awful it is: I think it’s the only thing in the world that could ever cause me to root for Alex Rodriguez to keep hitting homers. That shows you how awful the Bonds* thing is. Go Pay-Rod!

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Cowboys-Redskins. The Beautiful Harvey Martin tossing a funeral wreath into the visitors lockerroom at Texas Stadium following a Dallas win over Washington. Diron Talbert calling Roger Staubach a dirty name across the line of scrimmage. George Allen accusing the Cowboys of spying on the Redskins practices with a helicopter. Staubach leaping into the arms of Ron Springs after that game-winning pass to Tony Hill clinched the division in Staubach’s last-ever regular season game. Doomsday versus The Hogs.

Jimmy Johnson’s first Cowboys team getting their only win of the season on the road at RFK—without Aikman. Clint Longley’s mad Thanksgiving Day bomb that sealed his “victory of the uncluttered mind.” Larry Cole’s TD returns. The Texas Stadium crowd singing Happy Birthday to Joe Theisman the night he threw five picks in a blowout loss on the date of his birth. Billy Kilmer. Art Monk. Drew Pearson. Chris Hanberger. Joe Gibbs. Too Tall. Everson Walls. The 1982 NFC Championship Game. Michael Downs and Dennis Thurman breaking up the Smurfs celebration in the Cowboys end zone.

Sunday afternoon will be special. All Cowboys-Redskins games are.

Peace,

Allan

Home Sweet Home

November 14, 2007 / Allan / 0 Comments

“…you are no longer foreigners and aliens, but fellow citizens with God’s people and members of God’s household.” ~Ephesians 2:19

It was announced yesterday by the NFL that the number one selling player’s jersey for the first two-and-a-half months of the football season belongs to Cowboys quarterback Tony Romo. Nationally, Romo’s replica jersey is outselling LaDanian Tomlinson, Tom Brady, and Peyton Manning. That’s initially surprising to me. But when I consider that the Cowboys — overall, the top selling team in NFL merchandise since April — have always been one of the more popular sports franchises in the country and the Cowboys’ best players have always been among the individual top sellers, it makes perfect sense. Plus, Romo’s such a great kid with such a great story. He’s come from nowhere (in football circles, Eastern Illinois is nowhere). He’s had to work hard for everything he has. He makes gutsy plays. And he’s always smiling. What’s not to like?

And the better the Cowboys’ record, the higher the sales. The Cowboys are always in the top ten among NFL teams in merchandise sales. But just two years ago, they had dropped to sixth. Now they’re back to number one, no doubt due to their 8-1 start.

All of us feel a human need to belong to something, to be a part of some group. We get our identity, in large part, from the groups to which we belong. And that something or some group should be successful and popular. The human drive to identify with someone or some group or some cause — even if it’s only a sports team — is enormous. So we buy the jerseys. We refer to our teams as “us.” These identifications make us feel important. We have a need to belong, to have some sense of fitting in the world. And from that sense of belonging, we have the confidence and ability to relate and accomplish things. Our own families, of course, are foundational in giving us a true sense of belonging.

And the apostle Paul tells us in Ephesians 2 that we do belong. Christ has brought us home to God. We live in God’s house as members of his family. And at the same time, we are a house in which God lives. We belong with God and are involved in what he is doing. The other people in this same house are family with us. This home defines us. Christ gives us a place in his world. And from that sense of belonging we grow in our abilities to relate to others and accomplish great things for the Kingdom. Ephesians 2 tells us to remember where home is, remember where family is: We are at home with our God.

And our Christian life flows from there.

The church, as a family of faith, ought to feel like a family. Family members care for each other, are committed to each other, confront each other, protect each other, and sustain each other. That same sense of family should shape our worship. Worship should not be like a production we watch. It should have the free and comfortable feeling of being involved in a family experience, joining together to communicate with each other and with our Father. No one should be allowed to feel like an outsider in the church. Everyone needs to know they belong.

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There’s nothing quite like hockey people.

From the players and coaches and GMs down to the trainers and water boys, you’ll never find nicer people anywhere in sports. Hockey people are by far the most accomodating, the friendliest, the most down-to-earth in all of sports. I’m convinced it has a whole lot to do with my theory based on the relationship between job hazards and pay and the way athletes treat other people. I’ll share that with you some other time. The point is that I really hate to see Hicks fire Doug Armstrong.

Maybe he needed to go. The Stars are obviously missing something. Being bounced out of the first round of the playoffs three consecutive years puts the pressure on. But the mediocre start this season along with the two or three total meltdowns we’ve already seen makes it so much worse. I just know that Doug was/is the most open, available, friendly, honest GM I’ve every worked with. He could be clear across the country, in a crowded airport, in-between planes, and still answer my phone call. He could be on Central Expressway or stuck in traffic between Dallas and Frisco and he’d still return my call. That was great and always made my job so much easier. But better than that were the times we’d visit in-between periods up in the AAC pressbox. I don’t have a ton of hockey knowledge. And he knew it. But I don’t think he ever got frustrated with me. He always answered my questions and explained things to me. And he always asked about my girls.

I’m not sure Brett Hull’s the guy to take his place. Hulley’s another one of those hockey players, like most all of them, who are just as down to earth as you and me. I love his candor and his wit. His talent, during his heyday, was unmatched. He owns the signature moment in Stars history—even if his foot was in the crease. I do know Hull will provide the media with many more volatile sound bites than the guarded and laid-back Armstrong ever did. And that’ll be interesting and fun. But this move by Hicks has all the marks of desperation. This is a huge gamble. It’s either going to pay off huge or it’ll be a complete disaster. I don’t know what to compare it to.

I just feel bad for Doug Armstrong today.

Peace,

Allan

The Devil's Schemes

November 13, 2007 / Allan / 2 Comments

“See to it that no one takes you captive through hollow and deceptive philosophy which depends on human tradition and the basic principles of this world rather than on Christ.” ~Colossians 2:8

Screwtape’s initial letter to Wormwood sets up a theme that runs throughout C. S. Lewis’ masterpiece: the devil’s genius in using the material to distract us from the eternal. Screwtape speaks of Hell’s “weapons,” the daily newspaper, radio, television, and, I would add, the internet. He tells his nephew that “man has been accustomed, ever since he was a boy, to have a dozen incompatible philosophies dancing about together in his head.” And it’s the devil’s intention to keep man focused on that “stream.” That stream of unchecked information that floods us and consumes us.

Information. Stories. Scores. Quotes. Good news. Bad news. Entertainment news. Business. Politics. The bizarre.

The “real world.” We’re so easily distracted by all of it. Bible study is good and prayer is good and church is good. But that doesn’t pay the bills. That doesn’t fly too far once you get out in the “real world.”

Why is Satan so good at making us feel that only the material things are “real?”

Screwtape explains, “Thanks to processes which we set at work in them centuries ago, they find it all but impossible to believe in the unfamiliar while the familiar is before their eyes.”

Information is not neutral. None of it is. All of it that we see and hear and take into our lives has an impact. It all comes from a certain world view. And most of those views are incompatible with what we profess to believe as children of God.

Satan’s plan is not to teach. It’s to distract and confuse. We are not unaware of the devil’s schemes.

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OK. OK! The Cowboys are good. They’re a good football team. I’ve not denied that since about week five. I still don’t necessarily like it. But I certainly don’t deny it. Your emails and your comments to me about your team are much appreciated, especially the dry sarcastic ones. Rub it in my face. It’s fine. Very nice. I actually appreciate it.

Around here, Lance Parrish, our junior high youth minister, always wears his Tony Romo jersey on Mondays after a Cowboys game. That’s only mildly obnoxious. He’s young. It’s cute. But now the office staff has taken it to a new level of irritation. Bonny, Suzanne, and Jackie—all normally mature, level-headed adults—showed up at the Monday morning staff meeting yesterday in their Cowboys shirts. Rubbing it in. Laughing. Mocking. Enjoying themselves fully. And then when I returned from lunch, I was met in my office by an 8×10 framed glossy of the three of them. Mocking me. A continual reminder of my tragically wrong preseason and week-to-week predictions.

Kipi, thank you for being strong.

Everybody else around here, thank you for being so much fun to work with.

Peace,

Allan

Category: Cowboys (Page 48 of 55)

Jessica Ono

Rick Romo Rules!

Favorite Day

Go Ye Means Stay!

Home Sweet Home

The Devil's Schemes

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