The best rivalries work as metaphors for greater conflicts, and the Dallas Cowboys versus the Washington Redskins is a shoo-in. It’s simple: A half-century of gridiron combat between the ’Boys—playing out of “don’t tread on me” Texas—and the ’Skins—a team born in the beating heart of the nation’s bureaucracy—symbolizes the increasingly fractured American political system. Two wildly opposed sides moving ever further away from one another, screaming with increasing volume while a huge swath of ordinary people cower in the middle with their fingers in their ears.
The antipathy dates back to the early 1960s, and has featured memorable plays, dramatic finishes and pranks involving chickens on the field—amounting to a 62-44-2 record in the Cowboys’ favour, though the Redskins are 2-0 in the playoffs. This is where, in a normal rivalry, we would illustrate the stark contrast between the styles of the combatants. But there’s a problem with that: These teams don’t hate each other because they’re from opposite ends of the spectrum. They hate each other because they’re exactly the same. It’s impossible for fans of either team to disparage the other side without implicitly condemning their own team’s way of doing business.
Oh, you’re David and they’re Goliath? Get off it. These are the two richest franchises in the NFL. Oh, the other team’s owned by an unlikable, interfering egomaniac? The rest of the league can’t really tell Cowboys owner Jerry Jones and Redskins owner Dan Snyder apart. Oh, the other team is an overhyped franchise living off past glories while selling false hope to fans every season? Would that be the five-Super-Bowls-but-none-since-1995 Cowboys? Or the three-Super-Bowls-but-none-since-1991 Redskins?
But the Redskins are the worst because they have an ugly racial epithet for a name.
But the Cowboys are the worst because they decided to nickname themselves “America’s Team”…as if half the country didn’t actively despise them for the arrogance required to do just that.
Even villains consider themselves the heroes of their own stories. Anyone invested in this rivalry could regale you with decades-old triumphs, we-wuz-robbed gripes and all the reasons why their team’s future is brighter (“We have RGIII!” “Have you even SEEN Dez Bryant?!”). But none of that really matters, because the rest of the football-loving world knows there’s little difference between the two. Just don’t say that on Sunday morning anywhere near JerryWorld or FedEx Field.