Go Your Own Way
My original goal this year was to write about the Dallas Cowboys every week, documenting their sure-to-be exciting season amidst the backdrop of my own exciting life.
Leave it to my favorite team to immediately make me feel like an inadequate, lazy writer who can’t keep a deadline because I think this is the third column I’ve written in thirteen weeks.
But how could I be expected to write about such a downer of a season? Who could possibly want to see a fan of the Dallas Cowboys wallow in his own depression over a 2015 season that has seen the Cowboys check off every required box for a team who literally can’t have a single thing go right for them?
Oh right, every single non-Cowboy fan wants to see that. Duh.
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I have always found myself to be a fierce defender of the Cowboys, in times both good and bad, but especially in the times of bad. Since so many people love it when the Cowboys suffer a humiliating loss and knock themselves out of the playoff race, or to see Tony Romo throw a hideous interception, I often take it upon myself to fight off the attackers and point out all the reasons why the Cowboys are not embarrassing.
This season has seen its fair share of embarrassment, from Dez Bryant’s injury and subsequent middling play, to Tony Romo’s two collarbone breaks that have completely derailed his season. It just hasn’t been their year, and that really sucks, because it should have been. This team has the right ingredients to be amazing.
But there is one ingredient I cannot defend, and that’s Greg Hardy.
I wrote about this in the summer, but even back then we only had the testimony of Hardy’s ex-girlfriend who claimed he had severely beaten her and threatened her life. It was the type of story that likely was true, but since the case was settled out of court, and Hardy never really confirmed or denied what happened, it left us in that weird grey area of not really being able to totally condemn the guy.
When he returned this year after a four-game suspension, he said all of the wrong things, and none of the right things. This happened as the Cowboys’ season was already spiraling into failure, and because Hardy appeared to be totally non-apologetic for what he may or may not have done, the pile of attackers became an even taller stack.
And then Deadspin released photos of Hardy’s ex-girlfriend allegedly taken after the attack. The photos are indisputable proof that Hardy beat her mercilessly. We cannot get around these photos. They sit there right in our path, demanding to be dealt with, and if we don’t, then we do a disservice to every single person on the planet who has been a victim of domestic abuse.
Some might say that after these photos were released, the Cowboys should have fired Greg Hardy. Some might say that Hardy already had been disciplined by both the legal system and the NFL, and that further punishment would be redundant. A small number might say that the photos could be exaggerated, but those guys are assholes so forget them.
For me, the perpetual Cowboys defender, it left me with no gas left in the tank. When so many people I follow on Twitter danced with glee after every Cowboys loss, some specifically saying the Cowboys deserve to lose because they employ Greg Hardy, how am I supposed to respond to that? Am I supposed to tell them to back off and mind their own business? Of course they shouldn’t do that. They’re human beings with a brain, and when they see a domestic abuser getting paid millions to play football, they declare war. Any sane person would declare war on the team who kept him, and they would especially declare war on the team’s owner who unfathomably said Hardy still has all the qualities of a great leader for his team.
So when my team isn’t winning, when my two favorite players are injured or shells of themselves, and my team insists on trotting out a human monster…what do I do?
I keep watching the games, but I keep my mouth shut. For the rest of this now-meaningless season, you all can kick the Cowboys while they’re down. Make fun of them. Make fun of me. It really doesn’t matter, and we deserve every bit of it.
This is the 40th minute of our Behind the Music episode, where everyone is on drugs and it’s all falling to shit. Here’s hoping that next year is our sober reunion album, where we’re road-worn, but a little healthier and ready to rock once again.
