It's my first post, so i thought i'd share a little background information about myself and my passion for football and the Dallas Cowboys and Texas Longhorns with everyone. Since my birth in Galveston, TX, I've been a fan of the Dallas Cowboys. My father indoctrinated my brother and i to the Cowboys at an early age. He became a season ticket holder when he was still in medical school and could hardly afford to eat. However he found a way to buy 1 season ticket to the brand new Texas Stadium in 1970, the year it opened. He and a fellow UT Galveston medical branch resident, who bought the season ticket next to my fathers, would drive from Galveston to Irving to attend the games whenever possible. In 1975, when i was 1 years old, my family moved to Fort Worth so that he could start his medical practice and also to be close to Texas Stadium in order to attend all the home games. To him, the Cowboys were a religion. On Sundays during the fall, everything in our home revolved around the game. If it was a home game, my brother and he would make the 45 minute drive from our home in West Fort Worth to Texas Stadium in Irving. My father always liked to leave at 1pm so that he could get to the stadium in time for pregame warmups and stretching and of course listen to the pregame radio broadcast the whole way to the game.
When i was 3 years old, i was invited to join my brother and father on Sunday trips to the games. My brother and i would share a seat next to my dad back then. My brother, Sonny, and dad tell me that i'd complain a lot about being at the game and asking when it would be over but they continued to take me anyway. This was the mid-seventies and the hey day for the Cowboy mystique with Roger Staubach, Drew Pearson, Harvey Martin, Ed "Too Tall" Jones and of course Tom Landry roaming the sidelines. After a few years, I was old enough to really get into and enjoy the games...i was hooked on the Cowboys at this early age.
Sonny and i took this early obsession with the Cowboys and football in general pretty seriously like our father. Most of our free time was spent playing football outside. Whether throwing the ball with dad, who called my brother 'Drew II' after Drew Pearson and me 'Roger Prime' after Roger Staubach, or playing in front yard football games with the neighborhood kids, we were always outside playing football. My brother was the one with good hands so he always played receiver and i had a pretty good arm so i played quarterback.
Even when we were indoors, we simulated football games inside by lining up our Star Wars and later our Battlestar Gallactica figures against each other. We called our figures "the guys" and we spent many an hour pretending that my guys were playing in the Super Bowl. Of course we had them named and would do the color commentary for our 'Star Wars' figure football games and even emulated the crowd cheering as Tony D would make a 75 yard TD run. We had good times but it always ended up in a fight b/c Sonny's Star Wars guys would always win the game in the end and i'd end up crying...what a wuss! I can remember falling asleep in Sonny and my bunk beds with our guys as we called the Star Wars figures. I'd fall asleep while playing football with them. Like i said, I was obsessed! More about the Cowboys later...
My obsession with football started with the Cowboys and continued as i actually started to play myself, first with the Ridglea Roughnecks. I was 9 years old when i started playing with the Ridglea Roughnecks. The team was made up of mostly African American kids who were very good athletes. I on the other hand was much smaller and slower than most of my teammates. I eagerly anticipated my first tackle football practice but that enthusiasm soon turned to fear...
