DallasMorningNews – But the scene (and the sounds) during the game didn’t surprise former Cowboys quarterback Troy Aikman, who said quiet home crowds were commonplace during his tenure with the team. “I don’t think Dallas has ever really had a great home field advantage,” Aikman said last week during an interview on KTCK-AM 1310 The Ticket. “What I’ve heard is that, ‘Wow, they really lost home field advantage when they left Texas Stadium.’ Texas Stadium really wasn’t that different. Having played playoff games in Texas Stadium, that stadium was rocking, it was great. … But when we would play in Philadelphia, New York and walk out of the tunnel, I would have to be yelling at the top of my lungs for guys to hear me. And you get on the plane for the flight home and your head would be pounding, you wouldn’t have a voice, and that’s just the way that it was. There was no way you could go down there near the goal line and use hard count in an opposing stadium. And yet in Texas Stadium, teams did it all the time.” “I think for a large part – and the fans don’t want to hear this – a lot of the people that attend sports in this town, they’re there because it’s kind of just a place to be seen,” Aikman said. “I didn’t know anybody who went to Rangers games, and then when they started winning and going to World Series, everybody’s wearing Rangers hats and saying, ‘Oh yeah, I’m a big Rangers fan.’ “I’ve always said Dallas isn’t so much a sports town as it is a winner’s town.

This should be a lot more satisfying than it is. Reading the quote from start to end brings an involuntary smile creeping across my face, but it’s much more empty than it should be. Why? Because Dallas fans wouldn’t even disagree.

I feel like had Troy said this in the 90′s it would have caused the firestorm of firestorms. And rightfully so: they were winning Super Bowls, he was the star quarterback, they were ‘America’s Team’, etc. But nowadays this will probably barely crack the The Finish on PTI. Cowboys fans are soft as shit and now that they recognize this you can’t even offend them anymore. Your stadium is a roach-infested neutral ground field filled with apathetic middle managers who got free tickets from their corporate bosses. Anybody wanna argue? No?

Dallas fans have no heart anymore. There was a time in middle school when I could argue with the front-running Cowboys fans in their Starter jackets and feel their venom. Now they’re passionless. I have a theory that there’s only like 50 real Cowboys fans left. The rest of them either died off in the early 2000s when the wins dried up or care more about high school football or simply are “football” fans who happen to live in Dallas. It’s a shame, really, because guys like this are going to go extinct.

Grow some balls and cheer for your shitty team, Dallas.